Teratogenesis
by Ferric
Summary: A collection of unconnected Alternate Universe stories exploring the world of the RE series, often featuring characters getting infected with the different viruses that exist in the setting. Chapter 32 is an exploration of Sherry as a character set during her time in captivity during RE6.
1. Some Give All

**Summary:** RE 6 AU, Piers survives and has to come to terms with the fact.

 **Characters:** Piers Nivans

 **Notes:** Inspired by Commando64's Infected AU _Metamorphosis, and Consequences_. In one of the later chapters they threw a bunch of other AU ideas out there and I found them to be quite appealing. This specific piece was not inspired by anything they mentioned, but the idea came to me as I was thinking about what they had written and looking for more good Infected AUs.

o0o

Piers sank to the floor, his whole body shaking in a silent coughing fit. They had gotten less frequent over the past…two days if he measured the first day as from when he first regained consciousness until he was too exhausted to continue searching and the second day in a similar manner. That made today day three, different from the first two only by panic having largely faded to grim determination and the pain, while still there was becoming more manageable. His right arm, especially around the shoulder, still gave him a twinge from time to time, though he wouldn't exactly call it pain unless he got it caught on something, which was far too easy to do.

The coughing finally passed and without thinking he tried to take a deep breath, which had been what had set off the spasms in the first place. Cold water rushed into his lungs and he thrashed in the water. There must have been a small air pocket trapped in the debris around him because he suddenly found himself in an explosion of bubbles. He kicked upwards, following them and slammed his head into the ceiling.

Luck was with him this time, he hit his head hard enough to stun himself which saved him from the minutes of frantic struggling before graying out.

He allowed himself to drift slowly back downwards, letting the ringing in his ears fade and his senses slowly return. The feeling of drowning vanished and he focused on what it felt like to breathe. That was the hardest thing to get used to, learning how to breathe. The armored plates that lined his chest and sides rose up and little feathery appendages fluttered in the water. He guessed that they were some sort of gills because his lungs certainly weren't working.

That thought was a mistake, he felt his diaphragm spasm in response to the thought and the fluttering things froze in place.

No! He forced himself to calm down, to focus on the movements of those gills and let reflexes take over.

He had to focus on other things, like his surroundings, which he's lost track of while panicking. Air bubbles always went up and they were slowly crawling along the ceiling in a shimmering, wavering sheet that he felt as much as saw. This was one of the places where the emergency lights were still on, illuminating everything within a few feet of them with a faint red light that did nothing to help him find his way around the ruined compound.

The temptation to follow the bubbles was strong. It was commonsense that they were going where he wanted to be, up to the surface and obviously he should follow them. Since regaining consciousness he'd done the same thing countless times before and always with the same results. They occasionally ended up trapped in a pocket that he'd surface in, coughing and sputtering as he forced the water out of his lungs and drew in greedy breaths. This would last until the air was too thin and he started panicking, because the last thing anyone thought when they were getting light headed from lack of oxygen was to hold their breath, duck under water and wait for gills to take over. When he was lucky the bubbles all escaped out from a crack too small for him to fit through. Then all he had to deal with was disappointment.

Okay, this was good. He was breathing normally, or what passed for normally, he hadn't lost track of where he was too badly since he was in a straight, unbranching corridor. All he had to do was pick a direction and keep going until he was back in familiar surroundings or found himself in some place new.

All around him he could hear metal shifting and groaning as the structure continued to settle. Occasionally there would be a rush of movement through the water as some area collapsed completely, but so far he had been lucky and only come across those areas long after the dust settled. Getting used to feeling changes in water pressure was strange, though not as strange as when he ended up in areas where it was too dark to see and was still able to find his way around without bumping into anything. He could actually feel the water that his movements displaced hitting nearby objects thanks to the thin, branching appendages that folded out from alongside his mouth. They were also useful in the real tight spaces, if he swept them in front of himself he could get a pretty good idea of what was up ahead before actually committing to going forward. After a few close calls he had also gotten fairly good at using them to determine if he could fit through a gap in the debris. He still got the protruding bones on his right arm caught on things from time to time, but between its size and relative immobility that was understandable.

If he ever made it out of all this learning how to shoot again was going to be a bitch. He'd never been much of an ambidextrous shooter, but of course that was ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room, or the B.O.W. as it were, with said B.O.W. being himself.

When he'd shoved the Captain into the escape pod and stayed behind to cover his escape he'd figured that he would die in the process and it would be preferable to living and ending up a mindless monster. It was funny how that was the worst thing he could have imagined happening to himself at the time. He'd never imagined that there was an even worse fate than turning into a mindless monster, ending up as a monster but still being able to think the same as ever.

Hell, when he'd first woken up floating in place after forcing his way out of what he later realized to be a chrysalis, he'd assumed that he was still dreaming. He'd thought that the floating feeling had been a combination of painkillers and a concussion and that any minute he'd be able to open his eyes and find himself in a hospital bed and that the whole thing had been part of a nightmare because he was still able to think just fine. That was his first check to determine if he was alright, that he was able to think. It never occurred to him that he was still in the facility, trapped and terribly mutated until the moment he realized that his eyes were open and the foul taste in his mouth was seawater.

Most of that first day had been spend repeatedly panicking and graying out as he tried and failed to breathe with useless lungs rather than newly formed gills.

The second day had been similarly wasted as he kept trying to travel upwards within the collapsed facility rather than focusing on finding a way out and then up. He was starting to get the hang of it now though, enough so that there were times when he forgot that he was underwater and a monster.

That was the frightening part, that it was so easy to lose track and forget.

At the same time he figured that it was preferable to dwelling on every thought that entered his head and trying to figure out if it was normal or not, like how hungry he was. Logic dictated that it was perfectly normal for him to be ravenous considering it had been who knew how long since his last meal, but he kept second guessing himself, playing a mental game of 'would you eat it'. It was a topic of conversation that had come up on more than one occasion during his time in special forces, usually starting as 'what is the most messed up, weird, disgusting thing you've ever eaten?' and gradually turning into 'how screwed would you have to be before you were desperate enough to eat…'

Now he was playing it with himself.

Rattle snake?

They sell it in tins in Nevada. He'd had snake before anyway and it wasn't bad even if it was full of little bones, a strange combination of gamey and fishy was how he'd describe it.

Snails?

They were a delicacy in France or Italy or somewhere in Europe. They probably cooked them up in butter or tomato sauce and claimed they tasted like chicken and tourists spent buckets of money to eat the slimy things.

A worm?

Twice, each time on a bet. The first time had been during spring break and the worm in question had been at the bottom of a tequila bottle and the second time had been after wilderness survival training and the easiest fifty bucks he'd ever made.

Raw meat?

Assholes didn't know what a blue steak was. Kobe beef should never be heated above 77 degrees Fahrenheit. There was a deli in New York that served raw ground beef with mixed with minced garlic and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. They put it between two slices of toasted bread, baked fresh that morning, put on some raw onions and called it a cannibal burger.

Funny you should mention that…

No, not there yet, not at all.

But could he imagine ever being that hungry?

Not when the thought alone was enough to make his stomach churn. He'd seen too many people torn apart to imagine something like that.

But how could he be sure?

Because, if not for his stomach being empty, he would have thrown up at the suggestion.

What if the chance presented itself?

No. He'd rather die. That had been the plan.

Lost as he was in his thoughts he drifted along without paying much attention to where he was going.

He didn't realize something was there until one of his antennae, which moved seemingly on their own, brushed against it and the object they touched recoiled in response.

There was a moment of pure instinctive reaction and a pulse of electricity went through the area. The emergency lights flickered once then went out leaving him in total darkness.

Whatever it was had to be dead. He could feel it floating motionless in the water a few feet from him. Half swimming, half crawling along the wall he moved closer until it was in reach. Cautiously he reached out to it and bumped it away with the useless, fingerless mass that was the end of his right arm. Being left handed was going to take some getting used to. Reaching for it with his left hand he felt the two sets of smaller, blade tipped limbs stretch out as well. He still didn't have full control of them and they tended to simply mirror what his actual arms were doing, except when he fell asleep, then they managed to dig their tips into the nearest surface and hold him in place.

The thing slipped from his grasp several times, a combination of how slick it was and that his hand was numbed by the cold water. He hoped it was the cold, if his grip was permanently messed up it was going to be even harder to relearn how to shoot.

On the bright side his eyes were fine as far as he could tell. He could see better than he would have thought possible, especially in the areas where there was any light, no matter how dim and motion was especially noticeable. So his eyes worked fine, all of them, even the ones that hadn't been there before. The exact number was a mystery. He'd nearly jabbed a finger into one of the new ones when he tried to check and had decided that he didn't actually want to know the extent of the mutations. Realizing that the fingers of his good hand ended in claws was unpleasant enough.

This time his claws actually helped, letting him get a grip on what it was that he had just killed. There wasn't enough light for him to see much more than the basic shape of the creature, a tapering, serpentine body, nearly as long as his good arm. It was probably an eel then and a big one at that. Sea life was already finding its way inside the ruined facility. That was good, if the eel got in maybe he could get out the same way.

Let himself sink downwards to the floor, or perhaps float up to the ceiling, he stretched his antenna out into the water, trying to feel movement that would indicate a way out. Of all the changes his transformation into a B.O.W. had caused, for whatever reason the antenna had been the easiest to adjust to. He understood how they worked and what he was trying to do with them, which was frustrating in its own way. If given the choice he would have liked it much more if it was using his gills instead of trying to breathe was what came most naturally. No, that wasn't true, not by a long shot, what he really would have preferred was to have not ended up a B.O.W. in the first place.

He didn't blame anyone, he had taken the actions he had fully aware of the consequences, he just hadn't expected to survive.

And thinking of reflexes, if he'd been able to laugh he would have. As focused as he'd been on feeling for movement in the water he'd allowed himself to become completely still, even the constant fanning of his gills had stopped as he held his breath. Funny in a kind of humorless way, how so much of who he had been remained in what he was now. It wasn't fair. It wasn't…

He could feel movement. In front was the very faint feel of fresh water. Not truly fresh water of course, it was still the ocean, but it was water from outside rather than the increasingly stale and contaminated water trapped in the facility. Behind him there was movement as well, and from somewhere not very far away. The halls had branched several times and he had largely ignored them, thinking that he would backtrack if it came to that. Apparently he wasn't alone.

Telling himself that it was a big fish was pointless. Whatever it was, it was sticking low to the floor, moving forward in an irregular scuttling pace. He tilted his head to see if he could hear it.

Contrary to what he had previously believed, the ocean didn't eat all sounds, it just distorted them. He could hear as well as he had before, or he would have if not for the air bubble that had managed to remain persistently trapped in his left ear, which turned that side of his head into an echo chamber. Early on he'd made several fruitless attempts to dislodge it before coming to accept it as one of the numerous strange discomforts he had to deal with. The constant dull ache from his lungs, partially collapsed and full of water was far worse.

As it drew closer he was able to feel the shape of the creature well before he saw it.

It was a B.O.W. of course, a shield shaped body tapering off into a long forked tail, countless little legs skittering along the floor. He could hear them taping against the metal and their tips sounded hard. It had almost human arms on its back and was holding a pipe or some other piece of metallic debris. About ten meters from him it humped itself up a little so that the back of the shield was facing him. In the near total dark it was hard to tell, but he got the faint impression of a multitude of eyes and just behind them a gaping, fanged mouth surrounded by dozens of little grasping limbs.

Rather than attack it made a beckoning gesture with its free hand.

There was no way in hell that he was going to come any closer to it and lacking any other weapons, he raised his right arm in response.

It brandished the length of pipe at him and pointed with its free hand, first to something to his left and then to itself.

Why wasn't it attacking him?

The answer was so obvious that he couldn't help but wince. It had no way of knowing who he was. He'd emerged from the chrysalis completely naked, what was left of his uniform irretrievably melted into the resin that had encased him. There was nothing to set him apart from any of Neo-Umbrella's monsters, so to it he was just another B.O.W., but that didn't explain what it wanted.

It repeated its previous gesture, pointing to him and then to itself before slamming the pipe against the wall for good measure.

He responded by sending a pulse of electricity at it, not strong enough to hurt it because he wasn't quite sure how to manage it other than that it involved tensing a lot of muscles that he hadn't had before so hard that they almost hurt. He was getting good at sending out small bursts though because in total darkness he found that they somehow let him sense his surroundings better.

Weak as it was, the B.O.W.'s response to the pulse was immediate, it dropped the pipe and brought its hands together in a pleading gesture.

If he'd been able to laugh he would have because of how pathetic the whole situation was. It clearly still had some measure of sentience left and was trying to communicate with him.

Well if it was still at least marginally rational then maybe he could avoid a conflict with it.

'Get lost', was what he tried to say, but all that happened was a few clicking noises accompanied by an unpleasant grinding sensation in his throat and chest. Something was very wrong there, something that he hadn't noticed earlier.

The B.O.W. scuttled back a few steps and repeated its pleading gesture before moving on to a more elaborate pantomime. It pointed to his left, brought both its hands together to make a breaking motion before pointing to his left again with its first finger and thumb before bringing those two fingers all the way back to its open mouth.

This time he followed its motions and when he looked to his left he realized that he was still holding the dead eel. That must have been what the thing was pointing at and in that context the rest of its actions made sense. It was as hungry as he was and it wanted to eat the eel.

Half way through the motion of lifting his arm to toss the dead fish to the B.O.W. he stopped. He'd just been wondering about how desperately hungry he was and without thinking he had nearly thrown away food. Well his question about whether or not he was an unthinking, ravenous monster had been answered.

Holding the eel close to his chest in a possessive gesture he raised his right arm again, letting another pulse of electricity out through the water.

The B.O.W. got the hint and skittered off, leaving him to deal with how to eat in peace.

His own uncharacteristic squeamishness at the situation surprised him. This wasn't going to be the first time he'd eaten something raw or eaten without utensils, but those times were different because…

Because he'd been human then and now he was reading too much into every stupid little thing. He was hungry, he had food so he should just eat the damn thing and get it over with, which proved easier said than done.

When he opened his mouth everything felt wrong. During his frequent coughing fits he had noticed that things felt loose around his face, but at the time he'd been too distracted by feeling like he was drowning to pay much attention to it. Now that he was paying attention he realized that he could only open his mouth so far, after which something shifted and he felt the muscles of his face pulling sideways. Investigating with his tongue confirmed one of the first things he had noticed when he first realized his situation, that his teeth were both more abundant and sharper, but he also made the far more disturbing discovery that his lower jaw had pulled apart. There were two distinct halves to it and they moved independently of each other.

Disturbing as it was, hunger easily overcame his desire for morbid self-examination. There would be plenty of time for that later, after he'd eaten.

Bringing the eel to his mouth he bit down on it, razor sharp teeth easily tearing through the soft meat. For an eel it was surprisingly tender, which was a good thing since he quickly realized that, between his fangs and the rest of the changes to his mouth, he was unable to chew very well. Giving up on chewing he tried to swallow the chunk whole and as soon as it reached the back of his mouth he got another surprise. A newly formed set of muscles in his throat shifted and he felt something latch onto the chunk of meat and pull it down to where involuntary muscle movement took over. That explained the weird grinding feeling in his throat when had he tried to speak and it was something he wasn't going to dwell on, not when he hadn't eaten in at least three days, probably longer.

Each bite was a struggle as he tried to concentrate on tearing off chunks that he could easily swallow while at the same time trying to ignore the mechanics of eating. Realizing that the independently moving halves of his lower jaw worked to position the food where whatever it was that was going on with the back of his throat happened only made it worse. What the hell did he look like? Did he even want to know?

No, he decided he didn't. Once he had escaped he could worry about what he had become, until then it would be a waste of time.

After finishing the eel, bones and all, he felt slightly better. He was still tired and achy, but he found himself in a more optimistic state of mind.

Following faint changes in water currents he pressed onwards. As had been the case during the previous two days there were plenty of dead ends at holes too small for him to fit through, but eventually he found it, a hole large enough for him to fit his right arm through, which was better than any previous opening he'd found. When he first passed it he nearly kept moving until he realized that this particular hole was a direct path out and that it was through a pane of reinforced glass rather than steel and concrete. Running his claws along it he felt them catch in countless small cracks.

He rapped his knuckles against it, feeling vibrations travel through the damaged pane as he swept his antenna over it. The glass was over six inches thick and had held up so far despite the damage. Logic told him to move on and keep searching for a more likely way out, but the promise of freedom so close that he could feel it was too much.

He began a frantic search for something, anything he could use to break the glass, sweeping his antenna over the floor and sending out near constant weak pulses of electricity in the hope that something, anything would appear. Nothing, everywhere he searched there was nothing of use.

In helpless frustration he slammed his good hand down on the floor as hard as he could, the extra pair of limbs on that side matching the gesture, their tips punching through the metal of the floor.

Of course. He was ignoring the B.O.W. in the room again.

Swimming back up to the glass he pressed himself against the wall and positioned all four stabbing limbs over it. His first few tries were pathetic as he tried to figure out how to move muscles that he still didn't have a firm mental grasp of. He refused to give up though and with each successive attempt the movements became more certain, until with one last burst of effort he felt the tips punch through the glass. Pulling them free was a short, sharp jerk that tore away several chunks of glass, enough that the rest of the pane crumbled, the broken glass falling down in slow motion through the water.

He'd done it! He was free!

It was still a tight squeeze, enough so that he had to close his gills, the equivalent of holding his breath he supposed. Of course then he managed to get stuck half way through and start panicking as the familiar feeling of drowning returned.

This time he was actually able to fight it off, trying to keep his mind on his gills rather than his perpetually aching lungs. He had his arms and first set of new limbs through and as he twisted and struggled he could actually feel the tips of the new limbs gouging deep into the steel of the facility's outer wall.

When was the last time a door or wall had stopped a B.O.W. for long? Zombies were one thing, but actual B.O.W.s? He might have been a monster, but he wasn't going to die like an idiot, stuck half way out of a hole in a wall.

At last he managed to pull free, doing far less damage to himself than he had expected, a few scrapes on the plates the protected his gills and a fairly deep gash across his stomach, but nothing that should have been life threatening given his present condition.

Weak with relief he lay against the side of the facility waving his left hand back and forth over his gills to fan more water over them. Until now he hadn't realized how stale the air in the facility had gotten. He'd been blaming his near constant headache on his additional eyes, but it was starting to fade. Without thinking he took a deep breath, pulling more water into his tortured lungs.

His additional limbs dug into the side of the compound, holding him in place as yet another coughing fit wracked his body.

Damn it he needed to start paying more attention.

He rode it out, let the agony happen and tried to focus on keeping his gills moving rather than pressing them tight against his chest in a reflexive, defensive gesture.

All around him he could sense debris falling away from the facility, most settled to the ocean floor, but some rose up amid clouds of bubbles. There were things swimming by, fish mostly, or at least he hoped that they were fish. He'd only encountered the one B.O.W. so far so it was easy to assume that very few had survived.

He still had no clue how he'd managed to avoid getting killed in his short, one sided fight with massive B.O.W. that had been incubating in the facility. The B.O.W. had been too large for him to do much harm to it, his attempts at shocking it had only served to distract it, allowing Captain Redfield to escape. That had been enough for him and when it turned back to face him, knocking the last air from his lungs and sending him smashing into a wall he had been content with his last thought being that he had died doing the right thing.

Then he'd woken up to the situation he was currently in. All he could figure was that a chrysalis must have formed around him as he lost consciousness and it had kept him alive while his body mutated into something capable of surviving the conditions around him.

Bits of…something were falling down from above, settling on everything like snow. They clung to his antennae, which he shook clean. It might have been pretty if he could actually see it rather than merely feeling it. This was not what he'd imagined the bottom of the ocean to be like and it was something he would have been far happier if he'd never discovered that he'd been wrong about.

Fighting back the urge to sigh, which probably would have resulted in another lungful of water, he began to swim towards the surface, which was far more difficult than it should have been. During his training he'd gone through 'drown proofing', which was bitterly ironic given the situation he was in now. He knew that he was capable in the water, even under the worst of circumstances, but this was different.

While trapped in the compound he'd never really had to swim, mostly he'd just pulled himself along on whatever he could. Now he had to deal with compensating for his right arm being so much useless dead weight as well as discovering more of what was wrong with him. He'd thought he had webbed feet because that was the obvious conclusion when he came to terms with the fact that he was capable of surviving under water. He'd been wrong about that, his toes had just flattened out and grown longer and more flexible, meaning that he controlled direction more with how he spread them rather than by using his hands. It was a good thing he supposed, since when he tried to use his hands and arms to stabilize himself he tended to start listing to the left or right, depending on the direction he started over compensating in.

He was also starting to realize that he's been overly optimistic about the degree to which he had mutated. His original impression was that he was still himself, just with extras because of how he still felt so…normal. Now he was getting a feel for exactly how much he had changed. To support the changed structure of his right arm all the muscle groups attached to the limb had hypertrophied. Every time he tried to move his arm he could feel them pulling from where they attached to long spurs of bone jutting out of his back. The two pairs of insect-like limbs on his back had their own associated muscle groups, further distorting his frame. Small, rubbery nodules had erupted all over his back and sides. Resembling flesh of his mutated right arm, they were densest on that side and he was growing increasingly aware of them as he swam upwards. They had something to do with his sense of his surroundings, he was sure of it. Whatever allowed him to detect objects around him without seeing them was strongest on his right side, and the sense grew weaker moving down his body towards his legs.

His legs were another matter entirely. In the confines of the facility he'd never realized the extent to which they had distorted, but now he could feel that there was at least one extra joint between his knees and feet. Tension locked it in place while he was swimming, which was what had made him aware of it in to begin with. It did nothing to hamper his ability to swim. In the confines of the collapsed corridors it had probably helped him maneuver through some particularly tight squeezes, but he wasn't sure what it would mean when he got to the surface and was able to actually walk normally again. That was something to worry about when he actually got to the surface though. He had no idea how long it was going to take him to swim back up. No sense in worrying about something that might still be a long way off when there were other, more immediate things he could focus on like how he wasn't exactly alone.

The farther up he swam the larger and more dense the falling particles became and with them the fish. They were everywhere and of countless varieties both large and small swarming all around him as they ate the bits of whatever it was that was falling down from above.

Was this normal or did it have something to do with the collapse of the facility? He had no clue, all he knew was that the largest of the fish were bigger than he was and that in the distance he could sense even larger forms cutting through the water and scattering the smaller fishes. The realization that they were sharks brought with it a spike of fear until he noticed they were only interested in the smaller fish all around him.

Somewhere nearby he felt sudden movement and then the thrashings of an injured fish. One of the sharks must have attacked something and the others quickly moved off in that direction.

He continued to swim through the ink black water for what felt like an eternity, the transition from dark to light so slow that he didn't notice it until he realized that he was seeing flashes of movement as well as feeling them. Looking up he was able to see shadows above as well as the occasional flicker of light shining down through the water.

The further he went the more clear the view became. There was a massive debris field above him with all the fish and sharks focused on a single, impossibly enormous shape. They were swarming around it, pulling bits off of it and darting to snatch up the flakes that fell away. In the distance he could hear rumbles and crashes that he soon realized were the engines of boats. Whoever they were, they seemed to be sticking towards the edges of the debris field, which worked for him. If he was lucky he could surface and see who they were before taking any actions.

Using the huge, ragged shape bobbing on the surface as a landmark, he hurried upwards.

The thing started to take on a distinct form, though surrounded as it was by fishes it was difficult for him to tell what it was until he got closer. Somehow the massive B.O.W. that he and Chris had fought had actually been killed and its carcass had floated to the surface. Knowing that the thing was dead came as a huge relief. During his time trapped in the compound he hadn't given much thought to it except for the half formed idea that if he had encountered it he would have been given a second chance at a heroic death.

Reaching the surface a short distance from the rotting B.O.W. he retched violently, not from the stink, but from the stagnant water that had been trapped in his lungs His gills reflexively clamped down tight against his chest and he had to deal with the unnerving feeling of suffocation until he was able to clear his lungs well enough to take a breath.

It was one of the most intense experiences of his life, his lungs felt raw from all the abuse they had suffered and the air was burningly cold and so fresh that it made him dizzy. For several long minutes he simply remained treading water and getting used to how good it felt to actually breathe again. How had he lived his whole life until now ignorant of how good air smelled and tasted? The fact that there was an enormous, reeking thing only a few meters from him did nothing to diminish how wonderful it was.

Gradually the exhilaration started to fade and he was able to take stock of his situation. He could see the boats in the distance, an interesting collection of what looked like civilian research vessels and several larger ships that belonged to the BSAA. His earlier suspicions that his vision may have improved were confirmed by the fact that he was able to pick out the details of the BSAA logo on the side of one of the boats despite its distance. He could even see the people onboard well enough to notice that, for what should have been nothing more than a cleanup effort, there was a lot of tension.

Of course, the BSAA was probably stuck trying to monitor the activities of at least half a dozen other organizations who all had reasons for wanting samples of what was floating to the surface.

Yes, looking closer he was able to see that each of the civilian vessels had someone in the unmistakable uniform of the BSAA on them. That was good, better than he expected given what usually happened after incidents of this sort. Some of the boats were close enough that he'd probably be able to get their attention without having to swim any closer.

The question was, how to go about doing that?

He looked at his right arm, which was still a mess of malformed gray and red streaked tissue with exposed bone jutting out at irregular intervals. At least his previously exposed ribs on that side were mostly covered, albeit by the grayish armor that backed his gills. This was the first time he really took the chance to look at himself and he realized that the rest of him wasn't in much better shape than his arm. His whole chest was a patchwork of slick, gray-green flesh and raw red where his muscles had grown too fast for his skin. Black tinged veins pulsed across the ruined flesh and spread in a fine network across the surface of tumorous looking growths that budged out from between the irregular patches where his skin had turned into inflexible, leathery armor. Exposed to the air he could see little sparks arcing across the surfaces of the growths and along the raw muscle of his arm. His antennae, useless in the air, had folded back against his face and curled downwards to rest along his back. If he focused his eyes just right he could sort of see them, which also hinted at the positioning of however many additional eyes he had grown. Three seemed a fair guess based on the fact that his field of vision seemed larger all around, but far more so on the left side. On the bright side that probably meant that he would have an easier time adjusting to shooting left handed, though he was obviously getting ahead of himself with that thought.

If he were to attract any attention to himself he would be shot before he got the chance to explain himself. He knew B.O.W.s well enough that he felt confident that, barring a truly remarkable shot given the circumstances of a moving boat and a relatively small, very low target, he wouldn't be killed or even injured that severely. The thing was, he didn't want to get shot in the first place.

Watching the boats he searched for an opportunity. It would have to be one of the research vessels, one of the smaller ones only had two BSAA members on it which made it a good bet.

Movement drew his attention to another, much larger civilian research vessel. Everything was moving because of the waves so it took him some time to realize what had drawn his eyes to it. Training fought with his new senses until he realized why a certain patch of water was so attention grabbing. All the other bits of debris were bobbing up and down in place unless it was something light enough for the wind to catch, but in the one area there were several dark shapes that were moving towards the boat and against the wind.

His first thought was sharks, but there were sharks swimming all around him, occasionally close enough to the surface that he could see their fins and the things moving towards the boat were nothing like them. First there was the lack of fins, secondly they were moving too slowly. It was hard to tell given the distance, but they seemed almost human in shape.

Cautiously, he started paddling closer, trying to keep low and hiding amidst the debris as he moved in to get a better look.

Now that he knew what he was looking for he realized that there were at least half a dozen of the strange forms coming at the boat from different angles. Someone on the boat must have seen them as well because with a great deal of waving and pointing all of the BSAA agents on board gathered near the rear of the boat to look at something he wasn't able to see from where he was. One of them raised their rifle and fired a shot. Something thrashed in the water and there was a flurry of activity on the boat as the civilians either rushed for cover or hurried to see what was going on.

The commotion turned into panic as something pulled itself onto the boat.

Standing by and watching was against his nature and, despite not having a clear plan, he started to swim towards the boat. The floating garbage all around him got in the way and he fought his way through it, wasting valuable time until he realized that there was an easier way. Out of habit he took a deep breath before ducking under the water and swimming as fast as he could.

With his new senses he got a very clear picture of what was happening. At least a dozen of the slimy, wormlike B.O.W.s that wrapped themselves in a vaguely human shaped protective shell had swarmed the boat. He couldn't remember the name they'd been given, bu he recalled that they were nearly impossible to kill. One of them must have managed to get wrapped around the boat's propeller, because with the horrible noise of metal grinding and mechanical parts breaking the boat's engine fell silent. Streams of bubbles and dim popping noises reverberating through the water marked where shots were fired. The bullets only went down a meter or so before they slowed and disintegrated and he made a point of diving down below that range just to be safe.

Around him the water practically throbbed with energy as the electricity producing organs that had grown on his body went to work. He could feel the tension building in his right arm, exposed muscles twitching in anticipation of the coming release. Reaching the nearest B.O.W., which had yet to recognize him as a threat, he slammed his arm into it, bone spurs punching into rubbery flesh as he let loose.

Underwater the results were less dramatic than he had expected, with the B.O.W. merely tensing as the pale, fleshy worm emerged from its protective shell. He could tell that the thing was nearly dead, but he grabbed it with his left hand and dug his claws in for good measure, shaking it until it went still.

By this time those that hadn't made it to the boat realized that he was attacking them rather than joining in their attack and they swam feebly towards him, more pushing against each other and whatever else was near them than actually swimming on their own. He allowed them to draw close, his antennae sweeping wildly through the water as he worked to gauge range before letting off another massive discharge of electricity to stun them. He repeated the action several more times until something splashed into the water. The frantic movement more than anything else was what caused him to realize that someone had fallen overboard. No more using electricity then. At least the B.O.W.s were mostly stunned so they'd be easier to deal with.

Ignoring the person he hurried to finish off the B.O.W.s, pulling them apart to get to the actual worm creature inside. It was difficult, they were mostly protected by the humanoid shells they made for themselves, and when he reached down their throats or clawed his way through their boneless torsos he could feel the worms trying to squirm away. Stabbing his new limbs into them helped hold them in place while he fought them and he was willing to give his new form credit for giving credence to the 'weapon' aspect of B.O.W.

The continued thrashing near him finally drew his attention back to the person struggling to keep their head above water. They were a fellow BSAA soldier and he knew from his own experience just how poorly suited the standard gear was for aquatic situations. The guy was being dragged under by his own gear and between fear of drowning and being surrounded by B.O.W.s he was panicking too badly to manage to tread water.

Giving the B.O.W. he had hooked with both sets of stabbing limbs one last shake to be sure that it was really dead rather than just stunned he hurried over to the soldier. In his panic the man failed to notice him until he'd actually grabbed him by the front of his vest and hauled him to the surface.

Not realizing that he had been rescued the man struggled to break free from his grasp.

"Calm down, I've got you," Piers tried to reassure the man, but the words came out as a garbled grating noise due to the changes to his mouth and throat. Taking a deep breath he tried again, focusing on the individual sounds and the way his mouth moved, "I'm not going to hurt you."

This time he succeeded, though the wheezing rasp that his voice had become was unrecognizable, even to himself. The man seemed to have ceased his struggles and Piers let out a sigh of relief that cut short when he realized what was about to happen.

"Don't –" he started, but it was too late and his statement ended in a shout of pain as he felt the man plunged a knife into his shoulder.

It hurt badly enough that he was forced to let go, but at least he maintained enough control to stop himself from letting out a burst of electricity. Instead he dove down, thrashing helplessly in the water as he struggled to dislodge the blade.

In hindsight he should have seen it coming, he would have done the same thing given the situation. In fact he had to commend the guy for having the presence of mind to actually do it, which did nothing to change the fact that he now had a knife buried to the hilt in his good left arm. He pawed uselessly at with the fingerless mass at the end of his right arm, only managing to do more damage in the process.

Alright, he had to calm down, think. Could he manage to pull it out with his left hand?

The breath he hadn't even realized that he'd been holding escaped in a rush of bubbles when he tried.

No, that was out of the question, once he got his arm half way there the pain got so bad that he saw bursts of light and he couldn't manage to get his arm to bend at the right angle because of the knife.

Maybe if he twisted just right he could pull it out with his mouth. Not the best of plans, but it seemed like his only option.

Craning his neck he opened his mouth and froze when he realized that he could actually see his lower jaws spreading out. No wonder the guy had stabbed him. He'd realized that he had a mouthful of fangs, but he hadn't realized just how bad it was. Each side of his lower jaw terminated in a wickedly sharp looking bone spike and it turned out that his old, human set of teeth was still there, just shifted to the inner edge of each half.

Alright, enough being terrified of his own mouth he had to try and get the knife out.

He managed to hook the left half of his…mandibles, there was no other way of putting it, around the hilt of the knife and he tried to work the other side into position so that he could close them and pull the knife free. What happened instead was enough to make him recoil in horror. While he tried to figure out what set of new muscles in his face needed to move to close his mouth a second, smaller, set of sideways working mandibles latched onto the knife.

At least when he jerked his head back he managed to pull the knife free, a wispy cloud of blood rising up from the hole.

He let the knife fall and watched light flickering off its blade as it sank. By the time it had vanished from sight the bleeding had already stopped.

The question of what had been going on with his throat when he had eaten the eel and why talking was so hard had been answered. Pulling his secondary mandibles back down and using his left hand to make sure that everything was back in place with his mouth he decided that he could have lived a much more happy life without knowing that particular answer.

Above him the man was still struggling with his gear and one of the remaining B.O.W.s had started making its way towards him.

This wasn't going to be easy, but nothing ever was. He let out a silent sigh, the last air forced from his lungs in the process, as he swam back up. This time he grabbed the man from behind and started hauling him to the boat. He could see that there was still fighting going on there and from the noise and vibrations in the water he could tell that the other boats were drawing cautiously closer. At least no one had panicked and started shooting into the water. Right now he had to be thankful for the small things, like how much stronger he was than he had been. He had thought hauling the man he was trying to rescue onto the boat would have been a challenge, but he surprised himself with how easy it was to lift him up and more or less toss him to safety before pulling himself onto the boat.

There were still three B.O.W.s left standing and he meant to charge one to push it over the side and back into the water. Instead, not yet used to the way his legs worked, much less how to use them out of the water, he managed to fall face first onto the deck. The man he'd rescued was screaming and trying to draw attention to him, but the other BSAA members were too busy dealing with the ones actively attacking them to notice the one making a fool of itself by trying and repeatedly failing to stand. Everything would have been so much easier if every B.O.W. proved as useless as he was. There would have been no need for the BSAA to have soldiers if his situation were universal. Hell, there would have been no need for the BSAA because no one would want to bother with making B.O.W.s unless they needed a good laugh.

Half crawling, half falling he was able to make it to one of the B.O.W.s and sweep its legs out from under it with his right arm. If nothing else the limb made a good club. The stabbing limbs on his back followed the motion and dug into the B.O.W., pulling it down on top of him. Shots were fired, but they all managed to either miss entirely or hit the . The two of them rolled around on the deck while the BSAA soldiers jumped out of the way.

During the confusion he thought he heard one of the soldiers say, "Deal with the others first and let those two fight. We can deal with the one that survives."

He didn't care much for the last part of what the man said, but everything else he supported wholeheartedly and it seemed that everyone else agreed. At least as far as he could tell no one was shooting directly at him anymore.

He wrestled the B.O.W. across the deck until it managed to pull itself in half in an attempt to get free from his grip. The legs fell still while it wrapped its hands around his throat. That was fine, his gills were still half working, so he could mostly breathe and besides, he'd had days to get used to the feeling of suffocation.

Then the worm inside the thing rose up from its mouth and hissed wetly at him. He gritted his teeth, really more of grating all the different parts of his mouth against each other, and slammed his right arm down on it, dragging it into range of the rest of his limbs so that he could pull it apart.

Rolling back onto his stomach he made another attempt at getting up and this time, by letting his legs and feet bend in a way they decidedly shouldn't have been able to, he was able to stagger forward. He lurched over to where one of the two remaining B.O.W.s had managed to grab one of the BSAA soldiers. Like with the one he'd been fighting, the worm inside it surged out of its mouth, but before it was able to do whatever it was that it was trying to do he managed to grab it and throw it overboard. The soldier nearly fell in as well, but Piers was able to grab the man in time, fortunately managing to only use his left arm and not any of his other limbs.

During that time the other soldiers managed to deal with the last B.O.W. and he realized that the only reason they were holding their fire was because he was holding one of their own in front of himself.

This was his chance, the perfect opportunity that he'd been hoping for. He could identify himself and…

Assuming that the men on the boat listened to him what exactly did he expect would happen?

There was no cure of the C-virus, just a vaccine, so that was out of the question.

They'd have to take him back to land and put him in quarantine in some lab to run all sorts of tests to find a way to fix him, however long it took. The thought terrified him, he was going to end up trapped again, this time with no hope of escape. There was no fixing anyone as far gone as he was, any attempts would only kill him, which meant that they wouldn't try.

Worrying how to learn to shoot left handed was absurd because they'd never let him out in the first place. He'd be stuck sitting around and being worse than useless. He'd end up a drain on limited resources better used on projects that could actually help people instead of keeping a B.O.W. alive and in some semblance of comfort.

It was so easy to imagine himself in some sort of fancy fish tank in lab somewhere and even if he managed to prove that he was still sane, still himself, there was nothing anyone could do because it wasn't like he was simply infected with some virus. They couldn't let him out and go back to work because…where to start? He was the mother of all safety risks, no one would want to work next to the exact thing they were trying to eliminate and of course, the most obvious reason of all, he was still a B.O.W. If he was allowed to return to the BSAA it would mean that they were employing B.O.W.s in the most literal sense, which was illegal as hell and completely against the purpose of the organization.

And what about his surviving friends? What about Captain Redfield? He already beat himself up over every life lost under his command. How would he react to finding out that one of his men had survived as a monster? Would that be what it took to push him over the edge?

But that wasn't the worst of it, not by far.

He wanted to think that his noble sacrifice had inspired the Captain and that he'd be remembered as a hero. If he revealed himself now he'd lose that and instead he'd have to live as a monster. People wouldn't think about him and be inspired by his dedication, they'd talk about what a terrible thing it was that had happened to him. They wouldn't understand what had happened, wouldn't consider the circumstances and think that he was a hypocrite for turning himself into a monster.

It was so easy to imagine himself shunned by the very organization he had given so much for, left forgotten in some out of the way lab. Except he wouldn't be forgotten because he was certain that the Captain would come to visit him, because that was the kind of man Chris Redfield was. He'd come and visit as often as he could, which wouldn't be anywhere near often enough to make a difference for how lonely and isolated he would be, but it would be worse than him not visiting at all.

Because when the Captain would look at him he'd be seeing yet another failure, yet another good man who he'd sent to death and it would kill him.

That settled the matter.

Taking one last look at the sky and the boats gathered in a loose circle around them and birds picking at the floating hulk of the B.O.W. and at his fellow soldiers ready to shoot him the moment he gave them an opening he made his decision. Letting out a scream of rage and frustration he shoved the man he was holding away and dove overboard.

Bullets pounded into the water around him, but he was already too deep for them to do any harm. Little bits of shattered metal pattered against him as he swam away, leaving behind at least two men who had a story to tell that meant they'd never have to buy drinks again when out bullshitting at bars with friends.

The temptation to dive down and keep going until he reached the bottom was strong, but now wasn't the time for that. He'd seen firsthand that he wasn't the only thing to have survived and made it the surface. He could still help the BSAA, just not in a way that anyone would see or know about. That didn't matter of course, he hadn't joined the BSAA to be a hero or to be famous, he'd done it because it was the right thing to do and this was the right thing to do.

During the cleanup effort was over he'd stick around, picking off whatever B.O.W.s he could find and he'd keep at it until there were none left. Then he'd swim back down to the facility and scour every inch of it to be sure that nothing else survived. It would take a long time, but it needed to be done and he was the only one who could do it. He was starting to get a feel for what he'd become and if nothing else, it was very well suited for the task ahead.

Rolling over on his back he swam along with his eyes turned upwards, not looking to the surface, but scanning with all his senses for any telltale movement that would indicate a B.O.W.


	2. Of Monsters and Men

**Summary:** Alone in her apartment Sherry thinks about how she longs for the impossible.

 **Characters:** Sherry Birkin, Jake Muller

 **Notes:** Jake and Sherry are my favorite couple in the whole series and I wish more people would do more with them. Then again there are a lot of things I'd like it if people were to write more of. If anyone of you reading this would like to see an idea continued or have a suggestion for the next characters or virus I should write about please let me know.

o0o

Sherry got undressed in the dark because it was easier that way. Everything was still the same whether she could see it or not. She knew every blemish, every imperfection, every scar so well that she could see them in her mind as clearly as she could with her eyes, but turning the lights out made it easier to pretend. The thin trace work of pale scars on her back weren't so bad and the little circular patterns of dents on her arms looked almost deliberate. When she was feeling morbid she had sometimes thought that those bite marks were pretty looking in their own way.

As she took off her blouse her fingers brushed against the smooth, shiny scar that covered her left bicep. That one actually was deliberate. The bite, when it had happened, had been a deep one, right to the bone, and it hadn't healed cleanly. Over the course of a few days it had bubbled up into a growing keloid scar. Once she got back she'd taken asked for a few days off and when her request was granted she spent the night drinking with friends. When she got home, full of liquid courage, she doused the scar with liquid nitrogen and wrapped a bandage around it. The second time around it healed quite nicely and in a few more months it wouldn't be there at all. Of course there was no telling what the next few months would bring. Injuries and scars were a guarantee, but there were also uncertainties in her life now, one that hadn't been there just a year ago.

The sad thing was that dealing with the scars that went wrong had become routine. The first hypertrophic scar she'd ended up with had frightened her so badly that she cut it out in a fit of desperation and then seared it shut because she's panicked at the sight of all the blood. Only after the wound was fully healed and showing no signs of further development did she even think of looking things up. A quick internet search and she learned what a keloid scar was. Knowing that it was something relatively common helped reassure her and made her earlier panic seem silly. She also realized that she was lucky that her hasty removal efforts hadn't made things worse.

When the next one happened she showed it to the doctors and they examined it, confirming what she already knew, that it was an ordinary scar, not a sign that the virus in her was resurfacing in some new and terrible way. At her insistence they removed it by freezing it off and that was the end of it until the next one. The pattern repeated for the next few scars, with the doctors coming to the conclusion that they were just a little hiccup in her healing ability. After all the years and injuries her body had started losing track of when to stop.

With the tenth such scar she got tired of the poking and prodding and waiting for permission and surgery to have them removed so she managed it on her own. How easy it was to get liquid nitrogen surprised her, though the initial purchase of the special container necessary to hold it had proven quite expensive.

It was how she had dealt with nearly every single one of them since then, go drinking with friends to gather courage and then deal with it. There had been a few close calls where she froze things a bit too deep or spilled the liquid nitrogen in interesting places, but there had only been two real bad incidents. Looking back it was for her to decide if nearly freezing off two of her fingers was worse than managing to shatter the towel she had put over the table. The towel certainly had required a lot more cleanup, especially since she had company the next day.

Shaking her head at the memory she picked up her blouse and started to fold it only to stop as she noticed that one of the seams along the shoulder was starting to fray. It was a such a shame, she'd liked it so much, but she supposed she'd been putting off going clothing shopping for too long. She'd put on weight recently, most of it muscle despite having cut back on working out. For such a petite woman she'd always had an easy time getting and staying in shape and until recently she had thought it was a good thing considering her line of work. It hadn't always been such an ordeal, but now she was getting increasingly picky about what she wore and…

Tonight her friends were all at a party, but she was home alone getting ready for a shower. There were no scars that needed tending to so there was no reason for her to go. Besides, one of her friends had been getting a little too friendly and she had no idea how to tell him no. It wasn't that she didn't like him, it was that she was afraid and maybe there was someone else she liked more. The thought that she might have fallen in love without even realizing it was frightening.

After what she had been through as a little girl she hadn't really cared for people or touching or the thought of getting married, settling down and having kids and that had been after the nightmares had finally stopped. Unlike just about every other girl out there she had no interest in boys, at least not in a romantic way. She wasn't interested in girls either, so that took care of that. Confident that she would never love anyone, she allowed herself to fall into the trap of feeling safe that things would never change. How naïve she's been, everything changed whether you wanted it to or not.

Maybe her friends were right in insisting that there was someone out there for everyone and that it was only a matter of time. She used to laugh, humoring them even as she remembered the nightmares from her childhood. There wouldn't be anyone, that was what she had reassured herself.

Getting undressed in the dark was easier. A lot of things were easier in the dark.

Taking a towel out of her bedroom closet she wrapped it around herself, making sure to pull it right up under her arms and hold tightly on to it even though she was alone in the apartment. The tape holding the ointment soaked bandage along her ribs in place crinkled slightly as she adjusted the towel.

Alarming as it had been when it first happened, she hardly gave any thought to what was under the bandage anymore. If anything was thankful that it hadn't been somewhere worse, somewhere that would interfere with day to day life and get in the way. It was a strange thing to be thankful for, but after everything else she felt that it was necessary to count her blessings. So many people had it so much worse than her.

She made her way across the hall and into the bathroom without turning on the light there either. By now she knew her way around the apartment well enough to navigate it in the dark, which she did each morning until she changed out of what she had worn to bed and into whatever it was that she was wearing that day. Only once she was fully dressed did the lights go on and the curtains get opened. She could even change the bandage on her left side without turning on the lights, which was a very good thing.

The only exception was during her weekly examination of herself. That was when she agonized over every inch of her body, checking which scars were healing and which ones might end up needing to be dealt with. In the past year her examinations had grown increasingly through, but there was reason for that, for the first time in her life she felt self-conscious. It wasn't as bad as it might have sounded, though if she tried to explain it to anyone they'd likely take it the wrong way. She didn't hate herself, not really, and she never worried too much about her appearance. It wasn't at all unhealthy either, it was just that for the first time she actually cared about how she looked. Maybe that was why one of her friends had started showing a problematic level of interest in her, he'd seen the way she was dressing and doing her hair, noticed that she had started wearing makeup and jumped to the wrong conclusion.

He started inviting her places, trying to get her to spend more time with him and the others, perhaps assuming that she didn't want to be alone so much.

The thing was, she was fine, mostly, with being alone and no matter what he and the others thought, she still wasn't interested in…

She had to stop lying to herself. She was interested in men, specifically one single man and only one. It was more fascination than romantic interest, that much she was going to cling to, the same way she was clinging to the towel as she waited for the water in the shower to get warm.

There was no point in pretending that her interest was anything more than academic because of the impossibility of it all, but perhaps that was the point of it. If it had been possible would she still feel the same way every time she thought about him? Would she still spend so much time mentally going over every moment they had been together and reading too much into every word, every smile, every little gesture?

If Jake Muller had been the one to ask her out would she still be home alone getting ready to take a shower?

If he had been there to ask her out the answer would be a resounding 'yes', but he wasn't there and perhaps that was what made him so intriguing. She hadn't seen him in person since escaping the underwater research complex in China, though they'd talked several times, mostly about unimportant things. Talking to him made her feel, if not pretty, at least capable of wanting to be thought of as pretty, which somehow felt better than actually being thought of as pretty. She'd had enough men who didn't know better compliment her on her looks that it was meaningless to her. She never wanted to feel pretty, she wanted to feel…

If she was going to be thinking about the impossible she might go all the way. What she wanted was to feel Jake's arms around her. She wanted him to touch her in places where only her own hands had been before.

Folding her towel she got into the shower and let the warm water flow over her. Would he run his hands through her hair? Yes, she might as well think that while she imagined.

What would his hands feel like against her? Very much unlike her own, she supposed as she worked shampoo through her hair. She didn't even need to look to know that loose strands were falling away and getting caught on the drain. Losing her hair wasn't that frightening, it had happened twice before already, albeit when she was much younger. Stress did funny things to a person and she'd been under a lot of stress lately. There was no reason for her to assume that it wouldn't grow back just fine once again, no reason at all save for the nagging sense of finality about this time.

Thinking about Jake though, she would have all her hair back the next time they met because that was how she was imagining it. He would run his fingers through her hair and his touch would be strong and certain, not the cautious searching that she did every time she ran her fingers through her hair, afraid that she might find something amiss.

What would she do during all this? Would she run her fingers over the scars on his body, faint and fine and normal? Would she let him do the same to her? All of her scars?

She worked soap up and down her arms, imagining the way he might trace every little crescent bite mark, one by one up and up. He would look at her when he reached the remains of the burn on her left arm, which would be so very faint by then, hardly noticeable at all and she would shake her head because there were some things that she wouldn't be able to explain, even to him. Instead she'd let him put his arms around her. He'd gently run his fingers up and down one particular faint mark just off center of her shoulder blades and they'd smile at the shared memory, the closest she'd come to confessing everything to anyone who didn't already know. She wished she'd told him because she didn't know when she'd get the chance to confess, if she'd even get the chance at all. There might come a day when…

What would it feel like when they kissed? What would it feel like when he was pressed against her, not at all frightening she was sure, nothing like…

It would not be a kiss like the ones in the movies, the sort of violent, desperate probing that made her gag at the thought, but it would still be a passionate kiss. Maybe he was as unused to kissing as she was and they would learn together. She liked that thought as implausible as it might have been. She was sure that a man like him had been with countless women simply because he could, so perhaps he would teach her things.

Would his hands creep back around front to rub at her breasts like she was doing to herself now? Would they knead feeling back into her left side where the entire lower half of her breast had been subsumed in a growing mass of hard, rubbery scars? He knew about her healing so would he wonder why they were there, what had caused them and why she hadn't done anything about them? It would seem like something so minor, just a quick surgery compared to what he knew she could recover from.

She should have dealt with it when it first started up, but it had been too close to…

If her hand slipped while pouring the liquid nitrogen there was no telling how much it would hurt, how bad the damage would be and it was too easy to imagine herself slipping because of what was there. And what if, after all the pain, it grew back? What if, like the scars, it got worse over time? Best to leave it alone, at least until there was no more ignoring it.

Since she was imagining it would be easy enough to imagine that it wasn't there, but it was so much a part of her that ignoring it, even while fantasizing, was impossible.

Would he listen to whatever excuse she came up with and continue? She didn't think the scars would disgust him, she hoped they wouldn't, but he would still ask and she would need to come up with a reason. Whatever it was, she imagined he would believe it because there was no reason for him to think she would lie to him.

He would rub and gently squeeze and she would feel it and it would feel so good that she would moan and beg and…

Would his hands slip lower still and would she push him away they brushed against the bandage?

He'd ask, she was sure he would, but would she find the courage to do as she was doing now and slowly work the edges of the tape up? She'd have to because he knew and he would worry about whatever injury was so slow to heal that she needed to cover it, to protect it. How could she explain? She would have to tell him everything if she tried and then what would he think of her? Maybe just pulling the bandage away and letting him see without offering any explanation would be easier.

Once the bandage was off there would be no going back. Leaving it on would be safer, but that would be like lying to him. If they were going to share such an intimate moment why would she hide away so much of herself? What was the appeal of imagining the impossible if she refused to fully devote herself to it? She would remove the bandage because otherwise she would be imagining it all wrong. She'd already taken too many liberties, ignoring her thinning hair, the fact that despite being nearly twenty six she'd started growing again, how she could feel where bones she'd broken years ago were thickening, and the multitude of other little things that paled in comparison to what was beneath the bandage.

Jake would stare at it and she'd stare back. She would see the expression on his handsome face change to one of puzzlement, then shock, after which a slow disbelieving recognition would creep in, followed rapidly by disgust. She would stare, unable to look away unless she wanted to turn her back to him because the fist sized eye staring out from just beneath her breast was lidless and unblinking.

Water from the shower flowed down around it like tears, its irregular pupil narrowing to a slit as she considered that maybe she longed for Jake because monsters recognized their own.

Sliding to the floor of the shower she shook with silent sobs as she realized there was something far worse than the thought of Jake pushing away from her at the sight of the eye.

He might look at her with silent understanding and pull her in for a kiss. Maybe he would find a way to love her despite what she was becoming and that thought terrified her more than anything that was happening to her body.


	3. The Memory of Monsters

**Summary:** Two college students decide to explore the ruins of Raccoon City during their summer vacation, never expecting that anything would still be alive there after all so long.

 **Characters:** unnamed Male OC, unnamed Female OC, Lisa Trevor

 **Notes:** Thank you DarkGidora for all of the research you did for me, your advice and for pointing out some of the mistakes I made. Also, I found this one surprisingly hard to write. As much as I like sympathetic monsters Lisa Trevor is a special challenge for me in so many ways

o0o

 _there was a dead bird on the street poor little bird, pretty little thing all still and cold and eaten by ants last Christmas she'd wanted and angel doll such a waste there had always been a new doll each year for Christmas not anymore no dolls because_

o0o

"You've got the camera focused on me, right?"

"Yeah, just stay still for a second, okay?"

"Sure, but make sure you get the sign in the shot too, but not too far to the right where the fence fell down got it? I want the barbed wire on the top of the fence to be in it too. When we post this I want people to know that it's for real."

"Yeah, sure, now tell me, why isn't the picture showing up in the view finder?"

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I just said. The screen is blank."

"Did you turn it on?"

"Of course I turned it on, the power light is on."

"Keep trying!"

"What do you think I'm doing? I just figured since it's your camera you'd know how to use it."

"Are you sure it's on?"

"I'm sure…give me a sec here. Oh wow, that makes sense. When you handed the thing to me you had it set to record audio only. I think it's been recording the whole time…"

"Well delete all of it! The start of this has to be awesome because it's going to be awesome."

"Yeah, sure, tautology much?"

"I don't know, you're the one taking all the science courses."

"It means…never mind, I've figured this thing out, get into position. And in three, two –"

"Wait!"

"What now?"

"I've just figured out how we're going to start this."

"Again?"

"Just tell me the name of the power plant that had the accident."

"Millstone?"

"No, the other one."

"Three Mile Island?"

"No, not the one near where you went to school, the one in Russia."

"Do you mean Chernobyl? Because I'm pretty sure it's in Ukraine."

"Yes, that's the one. Now you can start filming."

"Alright and in three, two, one, go."

The camera's autofocus kicked in a moment too late, a group of multi colored blurs slowly condensing into late summer foliage and a young man in his early twenties standing in front of a fence. The bright morning sunlight turned his glasses into white mirrors, and the camera attempted to compensate, making his already tanned skin look even darker.

"Here we are," he gestured dramatically at the sign on the sign attached to the chain link fence behind him, little more than a white rectangle with 'no trespassing' in black letters, "Once we climb over this fence we'll be on the site of the biggest disaster in history, America's Chernobyl, Raccoon City. In," his cocky smile fell and his expression grew thoughtful for a moment, "In order to contain the outbreak that happened here the government had the whole city leveled. Now I'm going in to see what remains."

The camera shook and then turned off.

"They bombed it in '98," the girl who'd been holding the camera sighed, "Am I the only one who ever does any research?"

"Don't worry about it, get some good footage and you can do a voice-over for the introduction or something," he rubbed his hands together eagerly as he began making his way to the collapsed section of fence, "That way you can actually use some of what you found out."

"Yeah, or something," she rolled her eyes and looked out across the field on the other side of the fence, "Just be glad I actually do research."

"I am, I am," he sighed as he stepped across the fallen section of fence and into the quarantine zone where Raccoon City had once been located, "So what did you find out about getting to some actual ruins? Because this is pretty and all, but it's not going to be anything we can post on YouTube."

She followed after him, managing to snag the leg of her pants on a length of barbed wire despite proceeding with greater caution than her companion, "It's going to be a five mile hike at least because I want to stick closer to where there's some scrub for cover. There might still be people watching this place and I don't want to get caught."

"Five miles?" he looked at her like she was out of her mind, "After we walked this far already?"

"Yeah, five miles," she managed to pull free, leaving a long tear in her jeans in the process, "I'm playing it safe and besides, five miles isn't that far."

o0o

 _flowers April showers bring May flowers it had rained since last flowers so she would need to remember to bring a pen with her for when she went to visit mommy and daddy because the words would have washed away there was a half burnt stick in the fireplace that would work_

o0o

"This is the way, right?" he asked as they skirted the edge of a bramble thicket. Catching the look she was giving the deep red berries amid the thorns he took a step back from the bushes, "They're not poison, are they? Because I'm covered in juice from when we tried to cut through that thin patch."

"I'd be dead if they were," she sighed, looking at the berries with a wry smile, "We called them wine berries and I'd eat them by the handful."

"Really?" he reached for one of them, "Are they any good?"

"The ones I picked with my parents were good," she laughed, "These I'm not so sure about."

Picking the berry he rolled it across the palm of his hand, "Why not?"

"Because I'm not going to eat anything growing here," she said as she turned the camera back on and recorded some footage of the berry bushes and the birds that had gathered to eat the berries.

Dropping the berry he jumped back from the plants as though he expected them to attack, "Why are you filming now? I'm not trying to make a nature documentary."

"It'll be good footage," she zoomed in on a small fly crawling over a half-eaten berry, "Life goes on in the midst of the quarantine zone, just not human life."

"Oh, good idea," he brightened, "Let's keep going though, I want some really good footage of the actual ruins.

"Sure, sure," she kept filming as he started walking on without her, "I'll catch up with you."

Eventually the fly flew away and she stopped filming. When she looked up her friend was a speck in the distance and she frowned. To have gotten that far that fast he must have started running, probably because he was sick of how slowly she was going.

Taking a look around to orient herself she took off running, lifting her booted feet high to avoid getting them tangled on anything hidden by the tall grass. They would be getting to where the city proper had once stood soon and the last thing she wanted was to trip over some bit of unseen rubble like –

It was all she could do to keep from laughing when she saw him stumble and fall. Turning on the camera again she sprinted as best as she was able while keeping her feet up. The frenzied, shaking footage taken while she ran would be a lot more impressive with some careful editing. Odds were that their little adventure would make for real boring viewing, contrary to what he might have thought, so it was important to create a narrative where there was none.

When she reached him a few minutes later he was still sitting on the ground, clutching his leg. The knees of his pants were stained with dirt and grass. She made sure to zoom in on them.

"Are you bleeding?" she panted.

"I don't know," he hissed, "It'll make for a good story if I am though."

"Yeah," holding the camera one handed she shrugged off her backpack and took out a brown plastic bottle, "You can tell everyone how you cut yourself up walking through a biohazard zone, what might be the site of the first B.O.W. tests conducted on American soil. Awesome story."

Twisting the cap off the bottle poured some of it out over his knees.

"What the hell?" he screamed and jumped back, "Is that acid? Are you crazy?"

"It's hydrogen peroxide. It burns because it's pretty much bursting already damaged cells or something like that," she said as she tried to hold the camera steady, "Now did you land on your hands? Because if you did…"

"Why?" he glared at her, tucking his hands protectively under his arms.

Meeting his glare in kind and keeping the camera trained on him she explained, "Because it was the only thing I could think of to use if either of us got cut here, kind of a scorched earth policy just in case."

"In case of what?" he took a step back.

"No one knows what the hell they were testing here and I'm not taking any chances," holding out the bottle she waited.

"Well you can save it for yourself if you get hurt," he kept backing away from her until she gave up and put the cap back on the bottle, "Besides, since no one near here has reported anything strange there's nothing to worry about."

"Sure," she rolled her eyes and went back to get her backpack, "It's not like they've got this place fenced off or anything."

o0o

 _she told mommy and daddy about the doll and the dog even though she wasn't sure when the dog had been it had bit her and she had hit it then it was quiet and nice and good doggie she gave it bones when she saw it and petted it because having a pet was nice when she was alone even though they were all back together now supposed to be happy_

o0o

"Hey! We must be going the right way," he waved back at her, "I found a trail!"

Turning the camera on she ran to catch up with him. When he said trail he had to mean the remains of a road or a deer path or…

Stopping in her tracks she swept the camera back and forth, making sure to get a good view of what was in front of them.

"That way is back to the woods," he gestured parallel to where they'd come from then swept his hand forward, "So that must be to the city."

She followed the motion with the camera, zooming in on the silvery brambles in the distance behind them and then forward to the dark smudge ahead, "You're right. I can see it from here, but –"

"This is so cool!" he smiled like a kid on Christmas day, "It's been how many years since anyone's been here?"

"I'm not sure…" trailing off she tilted the camera to face the ground at his feet.

"You're not sure," he laughed, "I thought you were supposed to have done the research. Just do the math, how many years ago did they blow this place up?"

"Over ten, but that doesn't mean anything," keeping the camera trained at the ground she took a few steps forward, "I really don't like this."

"That I was the one to find the trail?" reaching out he tried to take the camera from her, "I want to get this on film, whatever it is that you're going to say."

After what barely counted as a struggle she let him take it. Waiting for him get it focused on her she took a deep breath, carefully thinking over what she was saying, "This trail…it shouldn't be here like this. It's too wide and well-worn to be a deer trail, but it's not overgrown enough to be from before the outbreak. Look," she gestured at the ground, "You can see the grass on it is shorter and damaged like it's used a lot."

"Do you think a B.O.W. made it?" the way he laughed made it clear that he didn't think there was any real threat.

"I don't know," her frown deepened.

"You don't know? There's something you don't know?" laughing he leaned in closer, "I thought you were an amateur zombologist."

"Not funny," she shoved him away, "I took introductory epigenetics as an elective because it counted as a philosophy requirement and one course on virology because I needed three more science credits and it was the only class I could fit into my schedule that semester."

"So, just tell me what you think, it'll make for good footage and give us the science angle."

"Fine," looking everywhere but at the camera she started talking, "The most common B.O.W.s are zombies. They wouldn't make a trail because they either wander at random or spend most of their time dormant until prey is nearby. Umm, there are mutated animals, but they just behave the same as they always do, mostly, except for extreme aggression and no fear of humans. There's a big demand for intelligent B.O.W.s, but they're a more recent development, supposedly. They've got some that can think well enough to use weapons, supposedly and there's…I don't really know. It's all theoretical except…there are ones that can be trained like attack dogs, but they're more recent than what happened here. If this place was anything, had anything, it wouldn't be this advanced, I don't think and it wouldn't have lasted this long. It would have either died from cumulative mutations or wandered away in search of prey, it which case there would have been reports of stuff happening. I don't…Please don't use this in the video," she shook her head and brought an arm up in front of her face,, "I don't talk good on camera. Just film the path and I'll do a voiceover with a lot of good information and I'll make it sound real ominous if that's what you want."

"Sorry," holding the camera out he let her take it and turn it off, "But do you have any clue about the path?"

"No," there was a grim finality to her tone.

He pressed the matter, "So you think someone else has been through here?"

"Obviously."

o0o

 _she didn't go up ways too often because it was towards the bad place where the bad things had been and had happened they were gone now so maybe it was safe they'd been gone for a long time and maybe there were places she hadn't been yet maybe she would find something she hadn't found a new doll that would be nice_

o0o

"Oh wow! Get the camera going, you're going to love this!" he was crouched down, looking at something to the side of the trail.

She did as told and looking through the viewfinder of the camera it took her a minute to realize what it was that she was looking at. For an instant she nearly smiled, then what she was looking at actually registered.

"So what do you think? Did we find someone's garbage dump? It explains the trail, doesn't it?" though he was technically asking questions his tone was decisive, "Someone's been poaching deer out here."

"No," kneeling down next to him she pointed at a skull half hidden by the pile of random bones in front of it, "That's not a deer skull and those aren't deer bones. They don't even all belong to the same animal!"

"Really? Are you filming? Because this is getting even better. If it's something cool say what the bones belong to. Whoa!" he nearly fell over when she shoved the camera into his hands.

"If you want this filmed you do it, because I'm half ready to turn around," grimacing she took a closer look at the weathered, mouse-gnawed skull.

"What is it? Start with the skull because it's really cool looking. Do you think it's a coyote or maybe a wolf?" he took a few steps to the side to get a better shot of the bones, "I mean if you know anything it's dogs."

"It's too big to be a coyote and the muzzle is too long and too narrow to be a wolf," as she spoke she started to relax, "The sagittal ridge is huge though so maybe a wolf-dog, except the dentition is all wrong. Some of the teeth are missing, but the ones still there are too…narrow? Not the best way to describe it, but narrow works, more cutting than crushing. It's the stop that's getting to me, it's not there at all. Not like a bull or Bedlington terrier. If I was going to compare to anything I'd compare it to a seal. No stop, kind of lizardy look, but there's the slightest hint of a dome past the eyes and that huge sagittal ridge."

"In English?"

She looked straight at the camera, "This thing had one hall of a bite and a bunch of features that make no sense at all."

"So you don't know what it is?" nudging the skull with the tip of his shoe he pushed it over, revealing that one side of it was partially caved it.

She exhaled sharply.

"What? Upset that it's broken? Because it would be a really cool thing to add to your bone collection," he zoomed in on her face.

"No," she looked back and forth between the bone pile and the camera, "I just went from being really glad the thing's long dead to really, really worried. I think the thing was an early B.O.W., based on some sort of dog which would be fine except it's everything together that I don't like. The skull's been crushed, there's a whole heap of bones around it and the bones are clearly not from deer or any other sort of animal. Look at that really long one, the one with the knobby bit. That's a femur, a human femur. The one next to it, the one that's just as long and thicker around, I don't know what it is, but if I had to guess I'd say it's the thicker of the two arm bones, the ulna I think it's called. From the size of it though, it didn't come from a human."

"Damn…"

"Yeah," standing up she brushed her hands across her jeans, "It's a bit pile of bones, human and B.O.W. and not all of them have sunk into the ground from time and weather, heck, there are some on top of the grass. They've been put here over time, recently even."

He let out a quiet whistle, "Anything else?"

"Yeah," she let out a nervous laugh ad gestured at the broken skull, "If I felt like going to jail for pretty much forever I could probably make a good amount of money if I were to bust its teeth out and sell them."

o0o

 _nothing new she must have been here before except rats the size of kittens there had been a cat and kittens once looking at the sky it was probably lunch time or later just like she'd gone to the store best go home to cook it was a good thing she'd washed the plates yesterday she was very good that way helping out mommy in the kitchen without being asked_

o0o

Turning back he saw that she'd stopped, "Come on, just a little farther."

Her only response was to take out the camera and aim it at the ground.

"What did you find?"

She kept filming the ground in front of her.

"Is it that much more interesting than the bone pile?"

"Yes," straightening up she aimed the camera past him, at the collection of half standing buildings a few hundred meters away, "We're turning back now."

"How bad can it be if I didn't even notice it?" breaking into a slow jog he hurried back to her.

"It's worse because it's fresh," for a moment she aimed the camera at him, then went back to the crumbling walls so enticingly close, "We're heading back now and we're doing it in a hurry."

"At least point it out to me," when he looked down all he saw was a dead bird being picked over by ants, a perfectly normal dead bird and perfectly normal ants, "Because birds die all the time and they've never freaked you out before. I mean when I found the dead hawk in the woods you were the one who cut off its wings and dried them for me to –"

"Exactly," she snapped and pointed at the bird with her free hand, "Its wings are missing."

"Like it's a mutant or something?" he leaned in for a closer look, but other than the wings not being there it looked like a perfectly ordinary bird.

"No, not like a mutant. Look at how messed up the feathers are," she gestured at the little feathers scattered all around it, "It's crushed and the wings have been torn off."

"So something killed it and ate them."

Lowering the camera she stared at him, "Something killed it and ate its wings, leaving the rest behind? Do you know how stupid that is? Nothing would eat a bunch of skin, bone and feathers and not eat the meat."

"So whatever it was, if it even was something, doesn't eat mean. That means we have nothing to be worried about. Let's just go to the buildings, get some footage there and head back. It'll make an awesome video and what difference is going a little farther going to make?"

Curiosity and fear fought and finally she let out a defeated sigh, "I'll go. Being this close and turning back is something I'd be kicking myself over for the rest of my life."

"Really?" his surprise was obvious, "I was sure you were going to say something like 'curiosity killed the cat'."

"Maybe," keeping the camera aimed at the ruins she pressed onwards down what once might have been a road, "But satisfaction brought him back."

"Brought who back?" he followed after her "Is this some crazy story that you never told me? Like some real life Frankenstein thing?"

"The real Frankenstein was Conrad Dipple and he died from drinking Prussian blue," walking carefully she attempted to avoid the rubble which was largely hidden by grass, "You said curiosity killed the cat, but there's a rejoinder to that saying, 'satisfaction brought him back'. That's all I meant."

Loose rubble shifted under her feet and she took a step back, "Let's go around this way. The ground looks more even and I don't want to trip over anything."

"Good idea," though he'd managed to get a good distance ahead he quickly turned around to rejoin her, "The ground there's caved in. There must have been a sewer running under the street there."

"Wonderful."

o0o

 _dinner and leftovers if there were enough the three of them could have a picnic the next day get dressed nice and pretty for Sunday dinner as a family daddy was usually away with work so it didn't happen often now they were together safe and safe and happy she would put on her best dress the one with the shiny bits and open the box so the rats didn't get them and they could all dress nice she didn't like the rats maybe with jam_

o0o

"I can't exactly say I've never seen anything like this before in my life," the camera was shaking in her hands, "But I've never seen anything exactly like this, close, but not exactly. When I was little a friend and I went for a walk through the woods with her parents. They took us to a gravestone about three miles out down an old dirt road, no houses near it. It was a real gravestone too, date and everything, from the 1800s."

"So you think it's a graveyard?" as he asked he dragged a finger over the black marks on one of the two irregular gray stones. Whatever it was it rubbed away on his fingers, leaving a smudge behind.

"What else could it be? And step back, it's rude to stand on a grave," despite being the one filming she was keeping well back from the cleared area. All the grass around the two stones had been pulled away and there were piles of weeds and wild flowers all over them, most old and rotten, but some were fairly fresh, wilted, but still green.

"Rude to who?" he wondered, trying to wipe the black that clung to his fingers off on his jeans, "It's not like they're going to care."

"Someone cares," but she couldn't think of anything to add to that. Instead she changed the subject, "Ready to head back yet?"

"We do have some good footage, or at least it'll be good once we do a proper voiceover for it, or maybe captions. If you remember all of the creepy stuff you said we can probably make a lot out of what was really nothing, unless…" looking past her he gestured at what had been their original goal before she made the detour to the two standing stones.

"I…" there was nothing for her to say, or at least nothing she could say that would convince him and she knew it. Everything they had seen so far had been creepy, but nothing about it had been inherently dangerous. If they stopped their video without going to the one building that was mostly intact their video would be pointless, a lot of buildup but no payoff, "Let's just be quick about it."

o0o

 _no no no no nononono new smell bad smell no one she knew not the bad man not the bad man's friend not the other bad man or the tall man or the other man or the ones who had found mommy for her were they going to bring her back to the bad place she thought they'd all left but they were back_

o0o

"You got that all on camera, right?" as fast as he was running it was hard for him to speak.

"Of course I got that on camera," her breathing was ragged and her words clipped, but it sounded like she was having an easier time talking while running, "Before we post this anywhere I want everything with me edited out. My face, my voice, everything. I don't want anyone to know it was me who helped you. Also, we're posting this anonymously and using some sort of security measures so it can't be traced back to us."

"How can you talk so much while running?" he panted and chanced a look back. Looking at her he had to struggle to keep from laughing. She had her head down, her backpack high on her shoulders and was moving with ridiculous bounding strides, "Is it because you run like a horse?"

"No, it's because I'm ran cross country in college and go for stupidly long walks for fun," she grumbled, hitching her pack up higher on her shoulders.

"And because you run like a horse?" the struggle was too much and he started laughing, nervous, hysterical laughter that made it hard to breathe.

"I run like a horse, you laugh like a hyena, just pay attention to where you're going and start heading left," ditching the pack entirely was tempting, but she'd shoved the camera in it to keep it from bouncing against her chest and after everything she didn't want to stop to take it out. Even if nothing was following them she wanted to put as much distance between herself and the house. Looking in through the door had been enough. A table and chairs, three sets of chipped plates. He'd made a Goldilocks joke and that had been enough for her. She wasn't even sure if he'd seen the dolls, all the stained and shattered little faces.

o0o

 _nothing taken the box was still there could smell them and bad smells did she hide did she follow stop them before they could hurt more take again_

o0o

"Get to the tree line! Now!" she panted, voice rasping and raw.

"Why?" he nearly stumbled at the sound of her voice it had been that long since she'd last spoken.

"I'm an idiot and I looked behind us!"

"What did you see?" he staggered and slowed down, "And if it's that impressive do you think you can film it?"

"Just keep running," her voice grew increasingly shrill with every word, "I don't know what it was but keep running. We get to the car and we get out of here."

She had no clue what it was she'd seen. It might have been a stunted tree standing amid the grass of the field, but she wasn't sure. Whatever it was had been tall and scarecrow thin, not like the pictures of B.O.W.s she's seen in the news and online.

"What did you see?"

Gritting her teeth she tried to ignore the pain in her chest and sides, "I don't know, okay? It was too far away for me to see any detail, but it was tall, real tall even though it wasn't standing upright."

"How tall?" then he continued before she could respond, "And it wasn't upright? You mean like the thing was on all fours? We can't outrun something with four legs!"

"It was on two legs but hunched over," she couldn't help noticing that, despite his assertion, he had managed a burst of speed that threatened to leave her behind, "It was humanoid, mostly, I think."

o0o

 _run run run runrunrun because even if they were a bad man it was a worse thing they had hurt her and she had had to run and when they followed she had to fight them until they left her alone she hadn't realized there were still bad things left lumpy and jumping and so many teeth no arms she could see and all hunched over she'd never seen one like it maybe the bad thing and the bad man would kill each other_

o0o

A shrill, animal cry echoed across the field, but they'd already made it to the woods.

"Take the camera out," he panted, "See if we can get a shot of it."

She ignored him and kept running, fear starting to give way to anger now that they were in something that resembled cover. Whatever it had been probably couldn't see them anymore and hopefully it wouldn't be able to track them.

Maybe they had enough of a head start. Maybe…

"Come on! It would be a great way to end the video!"

"No, keep running. If I catch up with you before we make it to the car you're getting left behind," her voice was little more than a squeak, but the anger behind her words was clear.

o0o

 _wait and hide again she'd hidden before if they came back she'd hide better and they'd leave_

o0o

Getting in to the car she slammed the door. She already had the key in the ignition and was turning it as he climbed in on the passenger side.

"So –"

She cut him off by turning the radio up to full volume. Not looking at him, not looking back, she drove off.

o0o

 _home and safe because she was in bed with the covers over her head keep the box close and be ready to run if nothing bad happened she would have to cook dinner soon dinner would be nice_


	4. Kafkaesque

**Summary:** My version of events leading up to a very different version of the bad ending of _Resident Evil Revelations 2_ focused on what would have happened if Moira survived.

 **Characters:** Moira Burton, Barry Burton

 **Notes:** The bad ending of _Resident Evil Revelations 2_ was a disappointment for me and this was my response to it. Technically this is the first RE fic that I ever came up with the idea for but it took until now for me to get things together and post it. Again I have to thank DarkGidora for proofing this for me, catching several major errors, inconsistencies and details that were not adequately explained. Also, as always, feel free to mention suggestions for other fic ideas in the comments. You never know what might inspire me.

' _Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities for escape, again, are as many as hiding places. There is a goal, but no way; what we call a way is hesitation.'_

-Franz Kafka, Aphorisms

o0o

In the haze between waking and sleep she began her morning routine, the mental checklist she went through everyday just to be sure.

 _My name is Moira Burton._

 _I was born May 24_ _th_ _, 1991._

 _I grew up in Raccoon City until -_

All thoughts left her when she realized it was still dark out. That wasn't right. She'd been sleeping through the night for a while now. Something must have woken her up. Hardly breathing she listened, trying to hear something over the ringing in her ears as adrenaline flooded through her. If there was something outside she was in trouble if she'd spoken aloud. Maybe she hadn't, maybe if she just kept still away from the windows, boarded up as they were, and the door with its flimsy barricade, she'd be safe. As safe as possible in a rickety shack on an island crawling with zombies.

She was safer than she'd been four weeks and three days ago according to the lines she'd carved into the wall next to her bed. Each day at sunrise she'd carve a new line. On the days when she didn't get back to the cabin on the outskirts of the abandoned town she'd had to use other means of remembering the date. It was probably longer than that, but the first few days she hadn't been in any shape to keep track of anything. By the marks on the wall it was 31 days. By the collection of mostly scabbed over cuts on the back of her left hand five of the nights had been spent worse off than she was now, unable to get back to the cabin for one reason or another. A month since she'd last seen Claire or anyone else.

She rubbed anxiously at the half healed cuts, bits of dried blood flaking off. Damn it, she'd thought… she didn't know what she'd thought. Or maybe she spent too much time thinking. What else was there for her to do with her time when it was dark and all she could do was wait, listening for things shuffling around outside?

They left her alone mostly now, but a few of them would come after her if she wasn't careful. Some of them had been persistent enough that she'd actually had to deal with them. She'd killed a good number of them. A quick glance at a different tally on the wall showed the number to be two dozen since she'd started keeping count. Two dozen zombies with nothing but a crowbar, in one instance a brick, and in another terrible, horrible moment, nothing but her hands.

The ones left were the ones that left her alone, except for Pedro. She had no idea how she'd deal with him if it ever came to that. So far she'd done a good job of avoiding him because of all the noise he made when he was around. Right now it was quiet, just bugs, wind and the distant sound of waves, so it couldn't be him.

That still left Neil as a possibility, except her shack, her home, was far from what she thought of as being his territory and he tended to keep to himself. The one exception was when he was hungry, but even then he wouldn't go after her specifically. Odds were that he'd have encountered far easier prey than her before making it this far, unless he was raiding the snares she'd set up. The other day when checking to see if she'd caught anything she found him eating a rabbit out of one of them. She hadn't been thinking and yelled at him, moving in to hit him with the crowbar she always carried with her. After that she'd spent the day running and hiding from him until he gave up and wandered off.

During their first few encounters he'd been a lot more persistent, but as he became less and less recognizable as human he started getting distracted more and more easily. When she got really bored she'd seek him out and yell at him from a safe distance, running and hiding or leading him to where there were other zombies just to watch them fight because Neil was one hungry mother fucker and when she got him going he'd eat anything in his path before wandering back to his territory.

A faint electronic beep interrupted her train of thought.

"Shit!"

Without thinking she slammed her left hand against the wall by her bed. The bracelet's light started blinking again and it let out another, stronger beep.

After all this time its battery must have been dying, which got it started blinking and beeping again. It had been dark and silent when she'd emerged from the ruins of the Overseer's tower, but a few days ago it had started beeping intermittently. She'd already broken a knife trying to pry it off and had taken to slamming it against whatever was at hand in an attempt to get it to shut the fuck up, which it was refusing to do.

"Quiet," she hissed, hitting it against the wall again.

Another beep

"Shut the hell up," she slammed it against the wall harder, shaking dust off the shelf on the wall by the bed.

Another.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut! Up! SHUT! UP!"

With every word she slammed it against the wall, harder and harder each time until splinters were flying through the air.

"Just shut up already! I know! I fucking know! You don't need to fucking remind me you stupid fucking piece of shit trash! I fucking KNOW!"

The shelf fell off the wall with a crash and she froze at the sound.

How long had she been carrying on for?

There were no sounds of movement outside so she probably hadn't managed to draw any attention to herself and, more importantly, the bracelet had gone silent again. She stared at it, waiting for the faintest flicker of red to show, but there was none. Maybe she'd finally gotten it to die for good. Maybe.

She hoped.

The board she'd been slamming the bracelet against was a splintered mess, starting to come loose. Shit, she hadn't been paying attention at all. If the shelf hadn't fallen she might have kept going until she broke through. Little flakey bits of something dark clung to the splinters and, swallowing back another screaming fit, she looked at her hand.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit. Fucking shit. Damn it. Shit, shit, shit."

Whimpering softly to herself she took in the damage. The tally marks she'd made had been obliterated and for no reason she could comprehend she felt guilty about it, more guilty than when she had first cut herself in a fit of panic over the thought of losing count of the days she'd been trapped alone. She'd made them there and they were gone now. Instead the back of her hand was covered in splinters.

Fighting back tears she tried to brush them away and when that failed she resigned herself to plucking them out one by one. At least it didn't hurt, even though she'd managed to break another finger.

Her left hand had been numb for a while now, the bracelet having slowly tightened around her wrist to the point where it cut off her circulation. She'd tried so hard to get it off at first, convinced that if she just got it off circulation would return to her left hand and everything would be fine. During that time she'd probably done more harm than good in a sort of fevered, frantic effort to ignore everything she was seeing.

Of course the bracelet hadn't tightened, that was impossible.

Pulling a particularly large splinter out she examined it carefully before tossing it away. If she didn't watch what she was doing she might pull away a shard of bone by accident.

Her hand was numb and cold and dry to the touch. Even if she got the bracelet off there was nothing she could do.

When she wasn't harassing Neil or looking for food or trying to find a way off the island she thought. All she could do was think. At least she could still think.

She thought about everything she knew and everything that had happened to her and everything she had done. She also thought about the things she wished she had done. That was why when she found the old handgun she carefully picked it up, checked that it was unloaded and brought it back to her cabin. A few days later she found some bullets and brought them back as well. It was good to have the gun, just in case. It was there to protect her from a very specific monster, so she kept it loaded all the time, even if she never brought it anywhere with her.

There was a monster she had to be sure she could kill in one shot when the time came.

Until then she had her morning checklist.

Right, she hadn't finished it.

"My name is Moira Burton, I was born May 24th, 1991. I grew up in Raccoon City until we moved away in 1998 when I was seven," she went over the list out loud because hearing her own voice was relaxing, "I joined TerraSave in 2011. I was 20 at the time and thought it was the most awesome thing ever. When I got the news I called mom and…"

It went on and on from there, a collection of names, dates, people and events that were important to her. So far she hadn't slipped up once, though there were a few times she'd started crying halfway through.

Sometimes, to try and trick herself she'd change the order in which she recited the checklist. There would have to be a time when she slipped up and when she did…

Finally the sun was up, time to mark another day on the wall and maybe clean the gun sitting on the table. She needed it to be ready for when the time came to use it.

o0o

Sitting on her bed she looked around the room and took stock of what she had. The gun, the bullets, her tally marks on the wall, up to forty three days and fifteen zombies because the previous day had been a bad one. On the shelf, which was now leaning against the wall she had spare rope and twine for snares, which she'd gotten pretty good at making. In her kitchen area there was an assortment of pots and pans and her two knives, one with the last inch and a half of its blade broken off from when she tried to remove the bracelet when it had started getting tighter. Not her smartest moment there, but at least she'd managed to stop herself from trying with the spare. The idea of having to kill a rabbit or rat with her hands still made her feel sick to her stomach, even though she'd gotten used to cleaning what she caught.

As long as she kept up with her mental checklist and kept an eye out for Neil and Pedro she'd be able to survive until help came. That in itself was amazing. She'd never imagined being able to make it on her own like this, she wasn't like Claire or Barry or any of the others, but here she was. Most of it came down to luck, at least at first, but she'd probably passed the point where it could be attributed to luck, good or bad.

If not for the events of the first day she probably wouldn't have survived for as long as she had. Except it wasn't really the first day, it was the first day of her tally. There had been three, maybe four days before that, but they didn't count because she'd spent them drifting in and out of consciousness as she struggled free from the ruins and then frantically searched for help.

Once she'd accepted the fact that help wasn't on the way, that Claire was gone and she was all alone, she'd had to figure out what to do next. By luck alone she found the cabin and ended up spending the night there.

Waking up the next morning in a bed that wasn't her own had been one of the scariest things she'd experienced up to that point, it was what made it real. The first thing she realized once the panic wore off was that she was hungry, ridiculously, stupidly hungry and she had no idea what she was going to eat. The kitchen area of the little one room shack had everything she'd need to cook a meal, but the rats had long since gotten to the food and back then she wasn't yet at the point where she thought of them as a food source.

With the half formed thought that maybe she could find something edible in the village she'd left the cabin and, if not for getting turned around on the nearly identical collection of trails crisscrossing the island, she never would have found anything.

She came across a place where there was blood on the ground and, for reasons she still didn't understand, she'd followed the trail instead of turning back.

When she found the body it was torn up beyond the point of recognition and covered in flies. They scattered when she got close, rising up into the air in a buzzing swarm.

The body itself was cold to the touch and just starting to smell. There was a rifle nearby, as well as two thoroughly dead zombies, making what had happened fairly clear. Since then it was something she'd thought over multiple times until she had a good idea of what had most likely happened. They'd been out setting up traps and managed to run into the zombies in an area of dense brush. There'd clearly been more than the two they'd managed to kill and they'd ended up getting mauled.

At the time her only thought had been how shitty her luck was. There had been someone else on the island and they had died before she could find them. She'd stayed by the body for longer than she had any reason to, looking at it as though she expected something more from the situation. Inexplicable as her actions were, they worked in her favor.

There was a shrill scream, like that of a child. Her first thought was that it was Natalia and she'd gone running in the direction of all the noise.

Instead of a little girl she found a rabbit caught in a snare.

Food, exactly what she'd been searching for,

Between then and now she'd found several more snares and from that figured out how to make and set her own. In terms of food at least she was fairly well off. Clothing on the other hand was still an issue, one that she was determined to fix today.

What she'd worn to the party all those weeks ago hadn't been practical at the start and after all she'd been through it was considerably worse for wear. Somehow, when struggling free from the rubble, she'd managed to rip the button off her shorts because her luck was apparently shitty that way. Since then she'd been using a spare piece of rope to hold them up because her leggings were torn in some pretty embarrassing places, not that there was anyone around to see it.

She'd also lost her jacket, but her shirt was still wearable, though stained brown from dried blood. It was amazing that she'd lost so much blood and still survived and the shirt was an uncomfortable reminder of a close call. There was also the fact that she'd torn it pretty badly during her struggle with the three zombies the previous day. One of them had grabbed her and she'd pulled away. It wasn't until they were all dead that she realized two of the holes that had already been there had been torn wider and where the zombie had grabbed her there were several new rips. It had gotten her with its nails and through the holes in the fabric she could see she was bleeding fairly badly.

By the time she got back to the cabin and tried to take her shirt off it was stuck to her where the blood had dried. Taking it off had reopened the cuts and torn it worse, which meant that today, unless she wanted to go around topless, she needed to find something new to wear.

o0o

"My name is Moira Burton," she whispered to herself as she watched the sun rise over the water, "My little sister is Polly, my mom is Kathy and Barry is my asshole dad."

She'd been out all night again, the first time since, she didn't know because she didn't have her tally. Shit, was she slipping? No, it had been fifty one days and she needed to make another mark because it was morning. Fucking Neil chasing her around for a whole day, nearly following her back to the cabin. Her fucking shit-head, ass-gasket of a boss. She knew most of the places where he slept and there were times she considered trying to kill him. She'd have to burn the body and make sure he didn't get away like he had the first time. That was going to be hard.

She dragged the nail of her right thumb across the palm of her left hand because it was in better condition there.

"I was born in Raccoon City on May 24th and the year was 1991. All hell broke loose when I was seven."

There was no blood from the injury, not that she expected there to be any. Maybe the bracelet was tight enough that it was confined to her hand.

"In 2011 I became a fulltime member of TerraSave, I thought it was awesome, but it was the biggest mistake of my life even though it was supposed to be a desk job."

That was the irony of it, she was never supposed to have been at risk of anything more severe than wrist strain from typing all day and maybe of dying from boredom during miserable PowerPoint presentations.

"My boss at TerraSave was Neil Fisher and he's a fucking snare raiding asshole," that wasn't part of the checklist, but it was true. Something kept wrecking her snares and she'd caught him in the act twice so far.

A flock of birds took off from the trees in the distance and she stood up. Was something coming her way? No, she could hear the sounds of a struggle. That was good, maybe the rabbit stealing asshole had found something else to chase after.

She started to walk away, but the noise continued, piquing her curiosity. If he'd found something that took that long to kill maybe it was something that could do damage to him. If it could hurt him it could hurt her. Investigating might save her trouble in the long run, giving her the chance to finish off whatever won the fight. Hopefully it would be Neil, she really wanted to kill the bastard herself.

For the first time in a long time she smiled.

Unfortunately, when she arrived at the site of the struggle her smile fell. It had just been a pack of the weird pig things that roamed the island. Nice as it was that Neil had managed to get rid of over a dozen of them, he hadn't been hurt in the process. Even worse, he hardly seemed to know what to do with himself, staggering from one to the other, starting to eat only to realize that there was more food nearby. It wasn't fair, he was gorging himself after stealing from her snares and she hadn't eaten anything in four days…

He wasn't paying much attention to anything other than the pigs.

Looking down at the ground next to her she saw a stick. The idea entered her head fully formed and before she could give consideration to if it was good or not she picked up the stick and threw it as hard as she could. It went sailing over Neil's head and hit a tree half a dozen meters behind him. Immediately he stood up and shuffled in the direction of the sound.

Again acting before she could have second thoughts she made her move, rushing in to grab the nearest wild pig.

It was already half eaten and even if she was hungry she wasn't exactly weak form starvation.

Holding on to the thing proved to be more of a challenge than she'd expected. It was slick with blood and slime and her left hand was as useless as ever. In the end she wrapped her arms around it and cradled it against her chest, resigning herself to the fact that once she got back to the cabin she was going to have to strip down and wash everything she was wearing, or wash the shirt at least. It was the best one she'd found so far, one of the few small enough to actually fit her. With the jeans, she could always find another pair and if they were too large she'd just cut them down until they fit and use a belt to hold them up, like she'd done with her shorts.

That was fine though, it would give her something to do while waiting for the pig to cook. She'd already decided she was going to have to boil the hell out of the pig before she ate it since Neil had been gnawing on it.

Feeling better than she had in a while she laughed. Neil had stolen food from her and she'd done the same to him and she'd gotten the better deal in her mind. It was a lot of food, even if it was a half mangled mess and she'd been hungry lately, despite how shit the food was. Rabbits and rats and not much else. Her attempts at fishing had been pathetic.

Careful to avoid any zombies she made her way back to the cabin and started a fire in the fireplace.

While waiting for the flames to get going enough for her to cook the meat she got a large pot of water and put her shirt in it to soak then grabbed a knife to break down the pig carcass. It was something she'd never done before and she had no idea where to start. The front half was mostly gone and its guts were hanging out everywhere, so maybe she should start by pulling them out.

It was a miserable, stinking job and when she was done she still had no idea what to do. At least the thing looked more manageable.

Standing up to stretch her legs she gnawed at a hangnail, spitting when she pulled away a little bit of something hard.

Oh shit.

She looked down at the ground, staring at what she'd pulled off. The knife was in her right hand, she'd been worrying at her left.

At least it was only a fingernail.

From now on she was going to have to be more careful, especially since the other day she must have done something to it in her sleep because it was bent at a funny angle now.

No, she wasn't going to think about that, or even look at her left hand, because then she'd have to consider how shriveled her fingers were and look at the places where she could see white bits of bone. She didn't know what that meant, well technically she did, that lack of circulation had killed it, but she didn't know what it's still being there meant. Was it normal for someone to be able to survive when a part of them, a part that was still attached no less, had died?

As long as she could go through the checklist she was fine, right now she had other things to focus on, like her first meal in days.

In the end her butchering job left something to be desired, she'd simply hacked off the largest chunks of meat remaining on the thing and tossed them into the pot of water that she'd washed her clothes in earlier. It was only after the water was boiling and her shirt and pants were drying by the fire that she stopped to wonder if she'd remembered to get new water for cooking. It probably didn't matter that much if she hadn't. She was going to boil the thing down to mush before eating it anyway.

o0o

The pig fed her for longer than expected. Two whole days before what was left started smelling too bad for her to want to take any chances. After that there were the rats that came by to gnaw at what was left. Fat and sleek they were one of the few things living on the island that actually looked healthy, which made cooking and eating them easier than it would have been otherwise.

Being able to eat everyday was a pleasant change, though the rats weren't very filling. Having eaten one already she found herself thinking about the wild pigs roaming the island. They were fearless and would often rush to attack her before she even saw them. Maybe next time she came across one instead of running from it she would try and kill it.

That sounded like a good idea. Not having to constantly worry about food gave her time to think.

She'd been doing a lot of thinking lately, mostly to fill up the time and silence. She'd started talking to herself even though at first she'd wondered if it meant that she was crazy, then she remembered hearing somewhere that crazy people didn't know they were crazy and decided that as long as she worried that she might be going crazy she was still sane. Reassured she continued her one sided conversations.

Mostly they were to her mom and Polly, though sometimes she'd talk to Claire. Lately she'd also started talking, not to Barry exactly, but practicing what she'd say if she ever saw him again. She was going to yell at him, blame him for all of this and then she'd apologize. It was the apology that took up most of her time because there was so much to say and most of her efforts were still her blaming him for everything and that wasn't what she wanted to do.

It wasn't like she was ever going to see him again, so yelling and apologizing were equally safe options.

o0o

There was something on the island other than her and Pedro and Neil. She'd seen them one night, but they'd vanished from sight too quickly for her to get a good look. She'd been tempted for a moment to give chase, but they had been by the ruins of the tower and she still didn't want to go there. Not yet.

o0o

Her apology to Barry had become as much a part of her day as her mental checklist. Each morning before she got out of bed, night before she fell asleep, while she was butchering the pigs, while she waited for the meat to cook, she would work on her apology. It had reached the point where it sounded pretty good.

"Barry, I get it, I really do. You yelled at me because you were worried. I think you were probably more scared than I was at the time, because until that night I was more confused and upset that you'd yelled at me than anything else. It was only when I realized that Polly wasn't coming home from the hospital that night that I realized how bad it was. I was afraid because you'd yelled at me and because I thought that maybe you didn't love me anymore because I'd done something that you'd told me over and over never to do. I was playing with one of your guns and yeah, I'm going to keep saying you shouldn't have left it where we could get to it, but at the same time neither of us stopped to think that we were doing something really, really bad. Maybe that was why we did it. I don't know. All I know is that I spent a lot of time trying to justify it, find a way to place all the blame on you and somewhere along the way I decided you didn't love me. Yeah, I got older and I should have known better, but I'd been blaming you for so long that to stop would have felt like a waste. I'd spent so long being mad at you that I didn't want to give up on all that effort. I'd gotten so used to it that I couldn't just put it all behind me. But you know what? I've been through a lot since then and it's kind of put things in perspective. We all do stupid things, I've done a lot of them, not that I'll ever admit all of it to you, but even with all the mistakes made holding on to one, making it all over again every day, it's bullshit. I'm sorry. I'm going to try and move on and make up for everything I've forced myself to miss."

It might not have been the best apology, but it worked for her. Besides, it wasn't like anyone other than her was ever going to hear it.

o0o

She'd spent too much time working on apologies and forgiveness. Her first thought when it had happened had been 'thanks Pedro' and she'd been sincere.

While she'd been hunting she'd managed to stumble across the cave where Pedro had been sleeping at the time and she'd immediately turned around. The cave itself must have opened out somewhere else, because she couldn't imagine Pedro, in the condition he was in, walking up and down the winding trail across the sea cliff. She'd only been there in the first place because she realized that there were birds all over the place there and that they might have nests. After three months she was so sick of meat that even the possibility that there might be eggs there had been enough to drive her to stupid lengths.

She'd found the trail and spent the better part of the morning making her way up it, towards where the birds had their nests. When she'd first noticed the cave it had seemed like the perfect place to rest before making the final push and once she found some eggs maybe she'd cook them there. Starting a fire, heating up a flat slab of rock and having sunny side up eggs had been what kept her going.

Then she saw a glint of light off of something metallic and she'd gone in to investigate because maybe it was something useful. In a way it was, Pedro still had that stupid fucking drill with him and that had been what she had seen. Slowly, carefully she'd started backing away and to her credit she didn't trip, didn't dislodge a single rock. Instead the damned bracelet had chosen that moment to light up. After a month and a half without a single beep or flash of light it lit up bright as ever. She'd looked down at it, finding it more of a cause for alarm than the blackened mess that remained of her hand, twisted nearly sideways and missing two fingers. By that point she'd gotten used to it, just like she'd gotten used to the bracelet being just as dead.

It lit up, then it blinked off as though nothing had ever happened.

Everything was going well until she reached the mouth of the cave. Then the bracelet let out a single 'beep' loud and clear.

Pedro rushed her and that had been the start of her frantic, scrabbling descent.

While she struggled to stay on the narrow path he charged behind her, his footing uncanny.

Any second she expected that he'd stumble and fall down, smashing into the rocks below. Instead she was the one tripped over some loose rocks and fell.

Against all odds she'd landed firmly on the path, which was a miracle.

Sparks flew as Pedro slammed the drill into the rock of the cliff face. The next swing was going to hit her for sure and without thinking she rolled out of the way.

It felt like she hadn't missed a single rock on the way down, shredding her shirt and tearing yet another set of holes in her jeans, but at least it had slowed her fall enough that she landed on the thin stretch of gravel that passed for a beach.

Her ribs ached from landing on them and the vision in her right eye was blurred, but she was alive and nothing felt that broken.

Not sure if she was glad to be alive or disappointed to have been deprived of such an easy escape, she struggled to her feet. As she did she felt something slide off of her arm and clatter on the rocks. Looking down she saw the bracelet sitting there on the rocky beach.

After all that time it was finally gone. Its weight, negligible to begin with, became immensely noticeable in its absence. Despite it being far too late for it to matter, the fact that it was gone was an enormous relief.

And her first thought, even as she lifted her arm to look at the glistening yellow bits of bone sticking out from the ends of the stump, had been 'thanks Pedro'.

She looked behind her to see if he was following and instead noticed the pathetic, crumpled thing that was no longer attached to the end of her arm. It was as black and twisted as burned wood, but until moments ago it had been her hand.

Not sure why, she went over and picked it up, marveling at how light it felt and how small it was. She compared it to the place it had been right up until now, noting that the bones looked like they hadn't been connected to it for a long time. She could see the flaky black skin where it had been attached, those few withered bits had been the only thing holding it on for who knew how long.

The bracelet let out one last feeble beep, drawing her attention to it.

Grimacing she ran forward and kicked it into the water, spitting after it, before resuming her examination.

The bracelet hadn't tightened, not that it mattered anymore.

More depressed about the loss of possible eggs than her hand, she made her way back to the cabin.

o0o

"And my first crush was back in second grade, on a little jackoff named James Rozzi. I gave him a valentine's card and he pushed me in a mud puddle after school," she finished her checklist with a sigh. Staring across the room she looked at the gun on the table, and next to it, like some sort of grotesque paperweight, her hand. She didn't know why she'd kept it, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to throw it away. It had been a part of her and getting rid of it like it was nothing more than trash felt wrong. She'd considered burying it, but that felt too much like having a funeral for a part of herself, besides, what if something dug it up and ate it?

As long as she worried she wasn't crazy. That was something she'd been telling herself a lot lately.

She looked at the wall, not even bothering to count the tally marks. There were seventy eight of them there. She had to add another, but she couldn't bring herself to get out of bed. Instead she lay there on the blankets, rubbing absentmindedly at the bones of her left wrist. It was a habit she'd developed with surprising speed. Any time she got anxious or depressed she started running her fingers over them or flicking her nails against them to feel the not-quite-pain. Her nails were getting long again. If she got out of bed today she'd file them on a rock or something even though lately all she was really doing was sharpening them.

Ignoring her nails she rolled over in bed and held both arms straight out in front of her. Carefully she brought them together so that if she still had both her hands they'd be palm to palm. The thought that she technically did still have both her hands, it was just that one was over on the table instead of the end of her arm, brought a weak smile to her face.

"Oh fuck."

There was no venom in the expletive, just a sort of tired resignation. The longer of the two bones, even though there hadn't been a longer one at first, reached the middle of her right palm when she held her arms like that. Her first thought was that the bones looked longer because her arm was rotting away, but the top of the stump was level with the end of her right wrist. The skin around it wasn't pulling back, if anything the stump were healing remarkably cleanly. The last bits of black had flaked away, and though it was crusty and oozing in a few places, it looked, for lack of a better way of putting it, healthy.

Healthy as the rest of her at least.

Maybe instead of practicing apologies that no one was going to hear anyway her time might be better spent going over what she knew about whatever she was infected with.

"It's called the t-Phobos virus. Whoever's infected with it turns into a monster if they get scared enough."

There, that was easy.

o0o

Two days in bed before hunger got her moving again. Apparently she wasn't as depressed as she wanted to pretend.

Of course she wasn't. If she'd wanted to end it she had the gun on the table, waiting for when the last monster showed up, though at this point she was starting to wonder if it was going to show up at all.

o0o

She'd been thinking it over while waiting for the rats to finish cooking, her apology to Barry was too long. She was still trying to justify everything she felt. Her intent had been not only to apologize, but to make him feel like he was still at fault despite her being the one apologizing. It hadn't been about apologizing to him, it was making him apologize to her.

"Barry, I know this is long overdue, way, way overdue, but I'm sorry. I was a stupid kid right up until, well everything, but I'm trying to be an adult now. I've been through a lot and I think I understand some of what you were thinking, why you yelled at me. You did apologize to me and as much as I tried to keep blaming you, making it so that you were the one at fault, you weren't. No one was. I'm sorry."

It sounded a lot better to her, less justifying, less squirming and trying to get out of actually saying she was sorry.

Funny what dying on a deserted island did for your ability to put things in perspective, because that's what she was doing wasn't it? Dying.

It was just a very slow process.

She could smell the rat stew over at the fireplace. It was almost done. Soon she'd be able to eat and then…

She was doing it again, rubbing the one of the bones against her teeth the way she used to gnaw at the edges of her fingernails. It was the same thing really.

o0o

"My sister's favorite color is green of all things," she stopped, going back over the mental checklist to see if she'd forgotten anything, "Right, and our first pet was a fish named 'Mr. Bubble Fish' because we let Polly name him. He died when…"

She was crying, over the fish that they'd left behind when they had to get out of Raccoon City of all things.

Until then had she even cried once?

Did it matter? Crying felt good for a change. Not much else did anymore. She still couldn't see too well out of her right eye.

Once the crying passed she got up and carved another tally mark on the wall. No need to bother with the knife anymore.

Four days away from an even hundred.

o0o

She'd lost the knife. How the hell had she managed to do that?

Earlier she'd been out gathering firewood and when she got back the knife was gone. She'd taken it with her in case one of the pigs showed up. That way she could butcher it away from her cabin. The bones had started attracting unwanted visitors and cleaning the mess had been horrible, carrying them away and dropping them into the water. From that point forward she'd made up her mind to clean what she killed away from the cabin. So she'd taken the knife with her and now it was gone.

Retracing her steps did nothing, it was like it had never been there to begin with.

o0o

Day one hundred and one. The gun was already clean enough, but she cleaned it again.

The monster hadn't shown up yet, but any day now, she was sure of it.

o0o

There was a reason for it, one as complicated as it was stupid. When she and Polly were little Barry made sure they knew about gun safety, the big one being that they were never to touch a gun without his permission. He'd told them that if they saw one of his guns out in a room that he wasn't in were to find him and remind him that he'd left it out, just like he would remind them to put their toys away. Except he made it clear to them that guns weren't toys.

Back then she'd been a little afraid of Barry's gun collection, not because of anything in particular, it was just that he was so serous when talking about them. Not like his usual, joking self. Normally Barry acted like part of his job as her father was to be as much of a dork as possible and embarrass her at every opportunity. When he talked about guns he got serious and she didn't like it because she associated serious with bad things.

More than once he'd reminded her that if she ever found herself in a situation where she needed to use a gun she should only point it at something that she was willing to kill.

Polly hadn't been afraid because she didn't know better. She didn't remember enough to remember how frightening things had been.

After the accident she'd had to listen through endless lectures.

Back then she'd thought that Barry had been mad at her, now she realized that he was mad at himself, how after all their little family had been through he'd nearly ruined everything in a single moment of carelessness when he left the key to the gun safe on the end table.

What she remembered most clearly about it all was that he was accusing her of wanting to kill Polly because he'd had to give them both timeouts for fighting earlier in the day.

Kid logic worked that way and it had made her so mad because how could he have thought that of her?

She'd held onto the anger for so long, working on it, refining it until she blamed him for everything because how could he love her if he thought she could want to do something like that?

She'd been a stupid kid and she'd worked hard to stay stupid.

o0o

Still no monster.

o0o

When she was little Barry would read a book to her. It had been her favorite book because of how silly it was. It had started with a simple fact being stated, that there was a monster at the end of it. All of the book was spent with a comical, blue guy trying to stop the pages from being turned because of the monster at the end. When she was little it had been the silliest thing, the poor blue guy getting increasingly frantic with each page being turned despite his best efforts to stop it. Finally the penultimate page would be turned and the monster would be revealed, much to the shock of the silly blue _monster_ who'd been trying to stop you the whole time. She'd laughed and laughed each time because it was one of those things that got better and better. She knew the joke but the monster in the book never figured it out until the last page.

It was one of the many things that got left behind when they moved away in '98, when she was seven. Like so many other things it was never replaced. She had to wonder, was that a deliberate decision on Barry's part?

Enough stalling, time to move on with the checklist.

"My name is Moira Burton. I was born May 24th, 1991," even though she'd already covered it she said it again, "When I was little my favorite book was called 'There's a Monster at the End of this Book'."

And there was a monster at the end of this story too, when it finally did end. At the start she'd been expecting a zombie or something. But now…she looked at her hands, or hand and…it didn't look like it was going to be anything so mundane. A Tyrant maybe, but those things were supposed to be rare.

Then again there were theories about what happened if a virus didn't kill its victim right away, that they'd acclimate to each other. After so much effort was it possible that someone had managed, by accident, to create a virus that could create a Tyrant from anyone? Maybe she was just one of the rare lucky ones. Pity she'd never bothered playing the lottery.

o0o

Left the cabin. It was too depressing looking at the wall and how many days it had been during which so much nothing had happened.

She still kept up with the checklist though.

Because she had the gun with her.

o0o

Three days of wandering around until she was too tired to keep looking. She fell asleep against a tree trunk, figuring that if something came along she wouldn't get up in time.

A torrential downpour woke her up, but she forced herself to tough it out until she was shaking like a leaf. Defeated she went back to the cabin. She'd left enough firewood there that it only took a few minutes for her to have a roaring fire going.

Before long she was warm and actually felt better.

o0o

It wasn't that she was afraid of death. Since pulling herself from the ruins she hadn't been afraid of anything because what was there left to be afraid of? The zombies left her alone, Neil spent most of his time sleeping and Pedro was easy to avoid. She hadn't seen much of him since the day by the cliffs.

What it came down to was that she wanted the chance to see the people she cared about before dying. Seeing Claire again would be nice.

Obviously death would follow shortly afterwards.

If she was serious about her apology to Barry ever reaching him she should probably write it down. Odds were he'd never see it anyway, but it was more sincere than endlessly reciting them to no one.

Finding paper would probably be a good idea.

If that failed she could always carve it onto the walls next to her tall of days.

One hundred and seventeen.

She should probably start writing out the apology soon.

o0o

She didn't dream much anymore, which was a mercy in its own way. Early on she'd expected the nightmares she had on and off ever since childhood to start up, but they never came back to her, even on nights where she'd cleaned the gun. They'd happened once or twice, though each time she realized it was a dream and woke herself up before it happened. Years of trying and she'd finally learned the trick.

Most nights were just so much nothingness until she woke up. On the rare occasions she did dream it was always about her childhood, more memory than dream.

There was the dream of her ninth birthday was so vivid that she woke up expecting to be in her bed in her room, surrounded by the presents she could recall in perfect detail.

Instead it was the same walls, the same marks she'd cut in with knife and nails and bone. Across the room there was the gun was on the table next to her hand.

Trying to shake the memory of her childhood she went over and picked it up. Funny how easy it was to look at something that should have been so horrifying.

Smiling weakly she turned it in her hand as she went over her mental checklist. It didn't seem like today was going to be the day.

In a way that was the most depressing part of it all, the waiting. There was no room for dread anymore, just resignation and regrets. She should have spent more time with her sister when she had the chance, but there was no changing the past.

Of all the people she wanted to see again Polly was probably first and last on the list. She didn't want her little sister to see her like this, depressed and unable to make herself do anything about it, but she wanted to say so much to her, give her advice on how not to make the same mistakes she had. Instead she let her mind wander back to memories.

They were all she had right now, that and her checklist and trying to stay alive for just one more dreary day.

The first few birthdays after leaving Raccoon City had probably been the hardest. So much of it had been trying to replace what they'd lost, but so much of it was irreplaceable. The sense of security the family had once had was gone and no amount of rebuilding and trying to forget the past was going to bring it back.

o0o

She'd done the math. Five months and she was still keeping herself going. Was that an accomplishment for her to be proud of?

o0o

"My name is Moira Burton. I was born May 24th, 1991 in Raccoon City and I don't want to die alone."

o0o

She forced herself to go any do something to break the routine she'd fallen into. After her morning checklist she arranged her few possession and went out for a walk.

Until she'd arrived at the edge of Neil's territory, crowbar in hand, she hadn't really had any plans. There she ended up with a goal in mind and went to get into a shouting match with Neil like she had way back at the start of her strange exile.

Of course it was different in some ways. Neil was unrecognizable as ever having been human. Little remained other than a black, writhing mass interspersed with shimmering cysts, that he was still able to walk upright went against all logic. If not for her already knowing, there would have been no way for her to tell it was him. It was still satisfying because harassing what had once been her asshole of a boss felt good, something she'd wanted to do since she'd first started working for TerraSave. Except had she really? Back then she hadn't really known anything about him except that he was really good at the whole PR thing and threw way too many parties for the purpose of boozing and schmoozing. She hadn't liked him, but how much of it had been her general dislike of anyone resembling an authority figure? If not for Claire and the others she probably wouldn't have even considered getting a job with TerraSave. It still felt good to see Neil in the condition he was in now.

For what was probably the better part of an hour she and Neil yelled back and forth at each other, except she was the only one doing any actual yelling. Neil could only moan and growl while she called him every nasty name she could think of and when she ran out of insults and profanity she kept yelling, blaming him for every terrible thing that had ever happened to her, even events he'd had nothing to do with. She yelled herself hoarse and then kept yelling until it was mostly just inarticulate screams of rage with the occasional 'fuck' and 'eat shit and die in a hole' thrown in.

Over and over again Neil charged her and she jumped out of the way. On some level she knew it was dangerous to let him get so close, but that made it easier to hit with the rocks she threw at him. It became a sort of game, how close would she let him get before hitting him with the crowbar?

She kept screaming and taunting, hitting him when he got close enough until she was just that much too slow jumping back. Before she could react he slammed his arm into her and she found herself lifted off the ground, tendrils wrapped around her throat.

Flailing in midair she watched as black, writhing worms pulled back, revealing a glistening, slime covered skull. A wet hissing sound rose up from somewhere in the darkness beyond too white teeth. The sound wavered, rising and falling as he held her there, not tightening his grip to choke her out or pulling her in for the kill, simply hissing and staring at her with the darkness where his eyes had once been.

He was laughing at her.

"You fuck juggling asshole!"

Her words rose into a shrill howl of rage as she lifted her crowbar and turned it in her hand so that the straight end was pointed downwards. Spitting at his face she brought the crowbar down as hard as she could, aiming directly into his open mouth.

The laughing cut off instantly and she found herself flying through the air as Neil threw her away from him. There was a fleeting sensation of stomach churning exhilaration that ended when she hit the ground. She tumbled head over heels and without thinking she tried to catch herself using both hands. Her left arm hit a rock, bone clattering against it and sending a jolt of pain all the way up to her shoulder and down her back.

Several meters away Neil was staggering back and forth, pawing at his face. Despite his efforts the crowbar remained firmly lodged in place.

It was the perfect opportunity for her to escape, but she couldn't. Neil had her crowbar and she wanted it back.

"Hey! Fuck-head!"

He stopped flailing and turned to her. Strands of black ooze flowed up around the crowbar as he half ran, half fell towards her.

She met him head on, grabbing at the crowbar with her right hand and slamming her injured left into his chest. Cold, thick slime flowed down her arms as she pulled up and away with all her might. Neil hissed and she screamed back, pulling as hard as she could until the crowbar finally started to come free. At the same time the bones at the end of her left arm caught against something solid and stuck. Neil slammed both arms down onto her over and over again, but she refused to let go, not when the crowbar was almost free.

They were stuck, locked together in a stalemate, something was going to have to give sooner or later. Either she'd manage to get the crowbar back or he'd manage to hit her hard enough to do actual damage. What she hadn't expected was for whatever it was that she'd hooked between the bones of her left arm to come free, but that was what happened. With a sound like something being pulled out of thick mud she managed to dislodge whatever it was she was caught on.

She stumbled back, what appeared to be a slime covered rib stuck between the two prongs of bone and the crowbar grasped firmly in her right hand. Shaking her left arm to dislodge the grisly thing she ran away laughing.

She'd done it! She'd gotten her crowbar back and Neil was the one who'd gotten off the worse for the encounter. He tried to follow her for a short distance, but she stuck to clearings and well lit areas so that he eventually gave up and oozed back to the darker places that he preferred.

It wasn't until she reached a small stream and started cleaning herself that she realized she'd managed to break the last few inches off of the longer spur of bone jutting from the stump where her left hand had been. Now both of them ended in sharp points. The break would have worried her a lot more if it actually hurt, but it didn't, so she instead focused on cleaning the lengths of bone as best she could.

The stump itself had healed as much as she figured it was going to. It wasn't crusty or oozing anymore, just a mess of shiny, smooth scar tissue that clung to the two bones. The bones themselves were still growing and she was willing to count that as a kind of healing. Maybe it was more accurate to think that they were still getting worse, just not in a bad way. The tapering, needle sharp tip of shorter of the two now reached the tips of her fingers when she held her arms out next to each other, and the longer one reached a few inches beyond that, even now that its end had broken off.

After losing a hand it was hard to worry about a few inches of bone that shouldn't have been there to begin with. In fact it felt like a small price to pay for finally shaking off the depression that she'd sunk into.

She felt better than she had in weeks.

o0o

Nearly six months, half a year. Winter would be coming soon. It was an intimidating thought. She wasn't worried, not exactly, she just wasn't sure how she'd manage. If she could find some good winter clothes she should be fine since she'd finally figured out the trick for washing what she had without shrinking it.

Yeah, her stuff wasn't shrinking in the wash anymore, right. That explained the shirts and pants, but what about everything else?

o0o

Fuck winter like the pussy ass bitch it was. Life was good. She'd had actual, honest to god stew three meals in a row now.

While looking for warmer clothing in some of the other cabins she realized that some of the patches of weeds around them were actually garden plots. That was an even better discovery than the boots that almost fit her perfectly she'd found earlier in the day.

A bit of looking and digging and she realized that there were cabbages and potatoes and carrots and some yellow and purple things that she thought were either parsnips or turnips. Whatever the things were, they were awesome. She'd actually had to revise the mental checklist because of them, replacing mocha ice cream cake as her favorite food. Carrots were a close second. Those she washed and ate raw because after months of eating meat-boiled-to-mush actually having something to chew on was probably the best thing ever.

Oh and there were beets. They stained everything red like she'd killed something, but they were pretty good too.

The only thing that worried her was discovering that some of her teeth felt loose when she chewed. Malnutrition was the likely cause, though that didn't explain why her mouth ached when she bit down, like her teeth were being pushed out of place from below.

There was an obvious answer to that, but she didn't want to think about it, not when everything else was going so well for a change.

o0o

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, shit, shit, shit. She rocked back and forth on the bed, rubbing at the bones of her left arm. They were so long and sharp now, perfect if she needed to…

She'd been over her mental checklist perfectly five times today once when she woke up and four times since…

Everything was there, the same as ever, but…

The gun was there, but…

Things had been going too well. She'd been eating vegetable and rat stew for three days now, sometimes not even bothering with the rats, though with all the seeds and stuff they were eating lately the rats tasted better than they had in the past, either that or vegetables just made everything taste better. That and she'd discovered there were oysters on the rocks at the beach. There was more food on the island than she'd thought. As long as she got enough firewood stored she'd be set for the winter.

She'd been collecting oysters, using her left arm? Hand? Bones? Whatever, to pry them off the rocks when she'd heard it.

A boat.

She froze, dropping the bucket of oysters she'd managed to gather.

She was saved.

Except she wasn't.

It wasn't the thought of rescue that had her heart pounding in her chest, nor was it the realization that whoever it was wasn't going to be able to do anything for her that had her stomach in knots.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fucking fair.

She wanted to scream, cry, rage at how enormously unfair it all was, but that was too close to the other things that kept creeping into her mind. If she slipped, even by accident, there was no going back.

Six months alone, worrying about a rescue that would never come and she never stopped to think of the reason why she hadn't gone crazy. It was all because she'd been alone. She hadn't beaten the virus or managed to adjust to living with it, she'd succumbed to it without even realizing. Her mental checklist meant nothing, she still knew who she was, what had happened to her, but she also knew that more than anything else she wanted to hurry to the docks and wait for whoever it was on the boat to arrive. Then she'd rip their throat out with her teeth and it would taste so good.

That was the one thought that kept coming back to her, how much she wanted to kill them. It made no sense. Yeah, she'd gotten a bit stir crazy, and maybe she was a little angrier than before, especially when she was stressed, but this was different.

Until now she'd taken it for granted that there was nothing really wrong with her mentally. When she thought about her friends and family all she could think about was how much she missed them. Thoughts of attacking them, tearing them to pieces never crept into her mind, but with this person, whoever they were, it was all she could think about.

Claire, nothing.

Polly, nothing.

Barry, even though she'd been so mad at him for so long, nothing.

Whoever was on the boat, they were food, like a pig or a rat.

After months of looking in all the wrong places she'd found the monster she'd been saving the gun for.

It would be so easy, except…

What if whoever was on the boat just died? Neil or Pedro might get them. Hell, depending on how prepared they were, an ordinary zombie might get them.

The unmistakable crack of gunfire sounded in the distance.

They were prepared.

Before she killed the monster she had to at least write out her apology and make sure that it would be found.

Her hand was shaking too badly for her to even scratch the words she had spent so long rehearsing onto the wall. If only she'd found some paper, or started sooner, or…

It was too late now, best to just do what she could, get the gun and get it over with.

Except that wouldn't do either, she had to remove all evidence of herself because what if whoever it was found her dead in the cabin? Somehow word might get back to her family and friends, Claire at least, if she was alive might come to investigate. If Claire wasn't alive Chris would for sure. From him word of what happened to her would get back to her family. If she couldn't apologize the least she could do was remove all evidence of her survival.

Grabbing the hand off the table she tossed it in the fireplace. Tinder-dry it quickly burned to ash. Now all that remained was for her to find a good, safe place to finish the rest.

More gunshots, closer this time.

No time to think.

She took the gun from the table and ran.

As she ran a new thought occurred to her. Maybe whoever it was would find what they were looking for and leave. More people would probably follow soon afterwards, but it might give her the time she needed to write out a proper apology.

So she hid, careful to move every time the gunfire seemed to be moving closer.

Whoever they were, they were persistent.

While moving and hiding she had several close encounters with Neil and Pedro, but both of them more or less ignored her. Of course they did, there was far more tempting prey.

There was a fleeting instant where she considered pursuing Pedro to finish him off so he couldn't get to whoever it was that had come to the island, but she stopped herself when she realized that her motivation wasn't to help the unknown person. The idea that Pedro or Neil, stupid cock gargling Neil, might get to them first was unbearable.

That would be a good thing though, remove the temptation before she got the chance to act on it.

No such luck, the gunfire continued as they made their way across the island.

They were looking for something.

Not her, because if Claire survived then everyone would know that she was dead and if Claire hadn't survived there would be no reason for anyone to think that she'd managed to survive either.

Maybe they were looking for something left behind by the Overseer. Maybe they wanted a sample of one of the viruses that had been used here.

If that were the case stopping them would be the best thing to do.

Stopping them, not killing them, not eating, just stopping them even if the other two were heavily implied.

Yes, she could stop them.

Tucking the gun into the waist of her pants she attempted to follow the sound of gunfire.

The further she went the more convinced she became that she was right. They were moving towards part of the island she had made a point of avoiding, the mines. No one in their right mind would go there without good reason.

In the mines she lost them and in the process got herself lost.

Maybe it was for the best.

If she ended it here no one would ever find her.

Yes, that was it, better than trying to find her way back out.

Taking the gun she held it. She'd cleaned it and looked at it enough that the feel of it was familiar. She wasn't afraid of it anymore, she wasn't really afraid of anything, not even what she'd become, or had the potential to become. Until she actually killed somebody or lost her mind she wouldn't be a monster. That was a catch-22 if there ever was one, that she was killing herself before she did anything that she'd promised herself she'd never do.

Stupid fucking mental checklist, such a waste of time.

From somewhere ahead the sounds of a struggle reached her.

She could still find them.

Putting the gun away she pressed onwards, still ready to kill herself if it came to that.

Screams, horrible noises, then silence.

Maybe they were dead.

She wouldn't have to kill herself.

Was that really for the better?

Small quiet footsteps, she didn't think they were human because no thoughts of blood and killing surfaced in the turmoil of her mind.

"Actually, no sense in leaving loose ends."

A child's voice. Natalia? But there was something terribly wrong about it, a certain jaded cynicism that was as grotesque as, she didn't know what, but it was stomach churning.

She crept forward, following the sound out of the mines and into something else entirely. Some sort of facility deep underground.

As she went on she actually caught a glimpse of Natalia and braced herself, expecting the urge for violence to appear, but it never did. At last the question of how Natalia had managed to survive was answered, but it explained nothing. The question became why zombies and infected creatures didn't respond to her.

"Oh Barry! You've got friends coming after you, don't you?"

She froze.

No, no, no. Not like this.

"Of course you do, they wouldn't let you come here on your own and that's a problem for both of us, isn't it?"

She got the feeling of having walked in during the middle of a conversation, one where the topic of discussion was something she didn't like. If only she'd been there for the start of it she'd know how to react, whether it was safer to leave or to stay.

Whose safety was she concerned for?

"I can't just take the boat and vanish, because you'll tell your friends everything that happened. They'll come looking for me and I can't have that."

It didn't make sense, but it did. The words were as much a threat as any she'd heard and the inflection was that of the crazy bitch who'd killed herself and caused everything to fall apart.

Or was it just her going crazy? Maybe she was reading too much into things, looking for an excuse to act on everything she was feeling. That was why she'd come here, wasn't it?

"So it would probably be for the best if just died here. They'll never find your body and I'll be free to –"

The child? woman? stopped talking.

Someone, Barry, pleaded in response, but she couldn't hear the words over the pounding of the blood in her ears. Still, she knew that she'd never heard him sound so sad, so defeated.

"Then let's get this over with," the words were spoken in a mocking, childish lilt. Then Natalia's voice hardened, became unrecognizable, "Give me the gun."

If she wasn't crazy already she was going to go crazy from waiting.

Inching forward she turned the corner and saw something straight out of her childhood nightmares, the ones that had never really faded as she grew older. A little girl holding a gun in her small hands.

"Put it down you stupid cunt!"

Natalia looked at her.

Barry looked at her.

Natalia didn't put the gun down, instead her arms followed the movement of the rest of her. The gun bucked in her hands and she dropped it.

Getting shot didn't hurt as bad as she'd expected. Falling down the cliff had been far worse.

Then the shock wore off.

Whatever had protected Natalia wasn't enough, especially when she bent down to pick up the gun. It was obvious what Natalia planned on doing and she wasn't going to let that happen.

Charging forward she smacked the gun out of Natalia's hands with her right hand, then slammed her left arm down.

Her intent had been to pin Natalia's hand down between the two bones, but her aim was poor and maybe she hadn't been trying that hard. One of the bone spurs went straight through her hand.

"You," the little girl's eyes narrowed. It wasn't Natalia, maybe it wasn't even a little girl. No child should ever wear such an intense look of hatred, "How did –"

The question was never finished, or maybe it was. Everything became a blur.

o0o

Start the mental checklist: _My name is…_

Not important anymore. After all the months of waiting she'd finally found the monster.

She'd been shot at least twice more since the start of the fight. It was hard to tell because she hadn't been able to hear anything over the screams at the end.

Natalia, the child, the woman, the Overseer had died quickly, though it had taken longer than it should have. There was no way a little girl should have been able to put up that much of a fight.

It was over and there was another flash of pain.

This time she felt it when the bullet tore through the muscle of her left arm. It hurt.

Everything hurt and there was so much blood. Not all of it was hers.

Most of it wasn't hers.

When she coughed she could taste blood, but she didn't think she'd been hit in the chest. Her teeth hurt.

Everything hurt.

Click.

Her heart skipped a beat at the sound.

It brought her attention to Barry.

He was aiming the gun at her, but there were no bullets in it.

Holding it like a talisman because he probably thought he knew.

All of the old anger, the bitter resentment flared up white hot.

He'd lied.

She didn't feel like she was dying, even though she should have been, shot four, maybe more, times. That only made her angrier. Why hadn't he been able to kill her? To save her?

Now she was going to have to live with what she was, with the guilt of what she was about to do.

Except…

Without realizing it she'd been stalking closer to him.

He was crying.

That wasn't how it was supposed to be.

He was supposed to be strong and brave and save her from the monster.

It was so hard to hold herself back.

Shaking with pain and effort, she took the gun from the waistband of her pants and held it out to him.

It was loaded, one shot, but at this range it was all he'd have time for. If it didn't kill her she'd be on him before he got the chance to try again.

The apology she'd been working on for so long had evaporated from her mind. The useless checklist was there, but not the apology.

 _Sorry_ , that was all she had to say, one word and he'd understand. Except when she tried it came out all wrong.

"Don't point a gun at anything you don't plan on killing."

Somehow he managed to understand. She could tell because he nodded when he took the gun from her.

A single shot rang out, bringing an end to the whole ordeal.


	5. Holding On

**Summary** : Chris cares deeply for Jill and knows she feels the same way, it's just that things are so complicated between the two of them now.

 **Characters:** Chris and Jill

 **Notes:** The t-Abyss is my second favorite virus and in this fic I decided to put a less glamourous B.O.W. in the spotlight, because not everyone is that lucky.

o0o

Like always Chris had called the doctors taking care of Jill nearly every day while on the mission. They'd had good news for a change, they'd managed to get a graduate of the EATM program to work for them and since then Jill been having more good days than bad days. He'd acted like he knew what the acronym meant and went on with things, trying not to get his hopes up despite it being the first time the doctors were actually optimistic about Jill's prognosis. While waiting for the assignment to end he'd asked around as subtly as he could to see if anyone had ever heard of 'EATM'. Every response had been negative, though that was expected. Bioresearch, even when it was for the best of intentions, was regarded with some level of suspicion and it wasn't as though the guys he was working with were any more likely to know about the science end of things than he was.

If things were getting better now that a new doctor was working on her treatment he was willing to accept that. At this point he wouldn't have cared if they said they'd gotten a former Umbrella researcher working on a treatment program for Jill.

They hadn't said anything about a cure though, just that she was having more good days than she'd had in the past. He was willing to accept that as well, not that he had any choice in the matter. Claire had been telling him for over a year now that it would be better if he just let go and moved on, but he couldn't. It wasn't like Jill was dead despite that being the official story.

It wasn't her fault that the t-Abyss vaccine she claimed to have found and used on the Queen Zenobia hadn't been effective, if there'd even been a vaccine at all. There were times he suspected it was all a lie she'd made up for his benefit, to keep him from worrying while they worked their way to the bottom of the whole Veltro conspiracy. She had always worried about him, like she secretly suspected that he couldn't take care of himself, even now. Every time he came to visit she'd make a fuss, like she had thought he'd abandoned her, left her to be alone and forgotten in her room in the basement of one of the smaller BSAA facilities.

When he arrived at the facility a young woman he didn't recognize, probably the EATM graduate, started lecturing him on things he already knew until one of the doctors pulled her aside and explained things. The look she gave him, equal parts pity and disgust, when she realized who he was pissed him off more than it should have, but if whatever she was doing was actually helping Jill he'd let it slide. They didn't have to like each other as long as she was doing her job and in a moment he was going to find out if she was as good as he'd been lead to believe.

The woman tried to follow him into the decontamination chamber that lead to Jill's room and was again stopped by the other doctors. By now they all knew better than to try and get him to fill out the pages and pages of forms that were supposed to be taken care of before a visit like this. They knew that he was up to date on the requisite shots and vaccines and didn't try to bother him anymore. As the door closed behind him he could hear the EATM doctor ranting about procedure, precautions and how the gift he was bringing was completely unacceptable. It was something he could have respected in any other circumstance, right now it was just frustrating.

A chime sounded, letting him know that it was safe to continue. The moment he opened the door to Jill's room he was ready to forgive the EATM doctor for anything and everything.

The room was clean, not simply clean though, freshly cleaned. Normally on the days they knew he'd be there they put off cleaning until he was there to keep Jill distracted and ease the stress of the situation. More than once he'd ended up having to handle the cleaning himself. Even before his eyes adjusted to the dim light he could tell the place was spotless. As for Jill herself, she was asleep. She spent most of her time resting, but this time she was actually asleep. He could hear her breathing, shallow and labored, but otherwise she was at peace.

"Hey Jill," he spoke quietly, not wanting to startle her.

She stirred slightly, lifting her head and turning in his direction.

"Chris?"

Her voice was a faint hiss, whistling and nervous, nothing like the strong and determined woman she'd been before getting sick.

"Yeah, it's me," he tried not to let the tension he was feeling creep into his voice, but it was hard. Seeing her like this damn near killed him, but he was the only one that cared she was still alive. All the doctors and the efforts made to keep her comfortable was because of him. If he abandoned her there'd be no one left.

"I'm…" she looked like she was going to try getting up, "Chris, I'm scared. I…"

For a moment it looked like she might fall and he took a step forward, not sure if he was going to have to catch her or if she would let him guide her back down. Instead she remained sitting, facing him like she was waiting for something, reassurance maybe. There were days when she was depressed, though she hid it well enough that he was the only one who could tell. This wasn't one of those days.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," he smiled at her and she smiled back. She smiled a lot during his visits and it was hard to tell when she meant it and when she was just going through the motions.

"I'm…" she turned her attention to the box he was carrying. Reaching out feebly towards him she gestured hopefully before letting her arm fall as though the effort was too much for her.

Despite telling himself not to expect too much he was disappointed. Jill was in far better condition than she'd been during his last visit, much more alert and coherent, but he'd been expecting more, some actual sign of progress.

"Chris…"

She was reaching out again, more determined this time.

Sighing he opened the box and held it out to her, the rat inside huddling in a corner, staring up with frightened pink eyes.

"Hungry," Jill cooed, her body convulsing as her smile grew even wider, her pale, wormlike tongue stretching out from between irregular fangs. The t-Abyss virus had destroyed her physically and mentally, but something remained. Enough that she still recognized him and looked forward to his visits, enough that she wouldn't attack him.

He was the only one she wouldn't at least try to go after.

He looked away, trying to ignore the rat's terrified squeaks as black, hook-like barbs on her tongue sank in and pulled the rat into her mouth. He could trust that she wouldn't do the same to him, that he could look away and not have to worry about the wickedly sharp claws and spurs of bone covering her arms digging into him. There'd been accidents of course, countless times when she'd tried to grab him to keep him from leaving and he'd been bitten more than once, mostly when he got careless and lost track of what she was doing with her tongue. The worst one had been when, after giving in to her begging, he'd let her kiss him and he hadn't bothered to take the time to push her tongue out of the way. He still had the scar on the side of his face from that one, as well as countless others on his arms and hands. She didn't mean to hurt him and he could tell she felt bad afterwards, but it happened anyway.

A soft, wet noise let him know she was done with the rat, leaving nothing but a slime coated mess of bones and fur.

She was looking at him when he turned to face her again, or she would have been if she still had eyes. There was nothing recognizable in her sloping features, the shallow dents where her eyes should have been, the rows of bristling fangs in her perpetually open mouth. She brushed a hand against him, little more than a curving club of horned flesh.

"Sad."

"Don't be sad," he took her arm, careful to avoid the spines and moved it out of the way so he could hug her, a complicated affair since he had to keep both her arms at an angle where she couldn't grab him and keep a hand free to redirect her tongue in case she tried anything. She had a thing about trying to kiss him when he wasn't paying attention. Most of the time no harm came of it, but it didn't hurt to be careful.

She wiggled in his grip and he tried not to wince at the popping sounds coming from her joints and bones as she settled into a more comfortable position. She was double-jointed pretty much everywhere and could turn more or less inside her own skin, which made what he was doing stupidly, insanely risky. Or it would have been if not for the fact that despite everything she was still Jill.

"No," she hissed, teeth brushing against him as she butted her head against his shoulder. Her tongue crept out again, but she didn't do anything more than pull a little at his shirt.

"I thought you liked being hugged," he put his free hand on her tongue, ready to pull it away the instant her biting became anything more than curious nibbling.

She tensed in his grip and he not for the first time he considered how dangerous what he was doing was. He still might have been stronger than her, but even if she was Jill, she was also a creature that was capable of dislocating every bone in her body in an attempt to hurt him if she wanted to. He would hold himself back out of concern for her, but she wouldn't do the same for him, or even care about hurting herself if she decided that she really wanted to attack him. She wouldn't though, he could trust her.

Just as suddenly as she had tensed she relaxed completely in his arms, a boneless feeling weight of slick gray flesh and soft muscle.

"No. Chris," she butted her head against him again, "Sad."

"Oh," it was hard to read her moods and what she said didn't always match what she was feeling, "I'm here now. You don't have to be sad."

Adjusting his grip on her he took the chance and let go of her tongue, which was now laying limply across his shoulder. When she didn't move he ran his fingers across the side of her face. She let out a sigh and her mouth opened a little wider, giving him an excellent view of all of her teeth, rows and rows of them, growing in places they were never meant to, going all the way to the back of her throat and maybe farther. He had no clue how she was even able to talk, but somehow she managed.

"I'm…" the muscles of her neck and face twitched and rolled beneath her skin as she pulled her tongue back into her mouth, "I'm _not_ sad."

She didn't really have much of a face, any expression he was seeing was his imagination, but for a moment he saw that look of determination that she had so often worn in the past, the one that had made him want to say that they should leave everything behind, find a nice piece of property in the middle of nowhere, build a house, settle down and let the rest of the world take care of itself. It was too late for that though, far too late.

There were times when he tortured himself by imagining that there would be another chance, that he would get back from a mission to learn that some new treatment had been tried and it had worked. He'd get to the facility and Jill wouldn't be in the same room, she'd be in a proper hospital bed, sitting up and lucid. She wouldn't be fully recovered, of course, that would be too much to hope for, but she'd be on her way. Maybe she'd be wrapped in bandages, to protect her skin as it healed, so he wouldn't be able to see her face, but he'd know it was under there. From her tone of voice he'd be able to know that she was smiling, a real smile with soft lips instead of rows and rows of teeth in a too wide mouth. They'd talk and he'd hold her hand, feeling her slender fingers entwined with his. Hell, he'd be happy, ecstatic, if she just came out of the mental fog that she'd sunken into since being infected with the t-Abyss virus, condition of her body be damned.

"Chris," her words were muffled because she'd pressed her face against his arm. If she wanted to she could have bitten him and there would be nothing he could do to stop her, "Is sad."

"No," he lied, "I'm here with you and that's all that matters. They've got a new doctor and -"

Jill tensed again, joints popping as she curled up tighter against him, pressing her face harder against the crook of his arm. He could actually feel the bones of her skull grinding against each other, a stomach churning reminder of how compressible and mobile every part of her was. The only reason he was able to hold her was because she let him and she seemed to be going out of her way to prove it.

"Nice," she cooed and Chris let out a sigh of relief. Then Jill rolled over in his grip, a motion that probably dislocated both of her shoulders, and continued, "Food and –"

Jill made a strange noise from deep in her throat, "Very good. Good good good good…"

She was repeating herself over and over, something she did a lot during his visits when they talked for any length of time. Over time he'd gotten the feeling that it meant she wanted to say something and couldn't figure out the words. Or maybe in her mind it was a complete conversation, one where he frustrated her by not understanding. It was so hard to tell what was going on with her, what she was thinking.

"…good good. Getting worse."

Chris froze, heart pounding, that was not the normal ending to a bout of looping, "No, you're getting better."

"Getting worse," her tongue snaked back out and brushed against his chest, "Always sad."

She wasn't talking about herself.

"Jill, I'm not always sad, I –"

She bit him, not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to get him to stop talking.

Jill thrashed and writhed in his grip and it was all he could do to hold on.

"Jill! Stop!"

And miracle of miracles, she did. She remained tense in his grip, caught in some powerful internal struggle. Then she relaxed, not her usual state of total bonelessness, but something where if here were to close his eyes it wouldn't be too hard to imagine that what he was holding in his arms was a human woman, not B.O.W. It was as though for a moment Jill was back. This was exactly what he'd been hoping for after all this time.

He didn't dare speak, though there was so much he wanted to say, he was afraid that anything he did, any sound would bring it all crashing down.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, "I never wanted to hurt you like this."

And then she was gone. Utterly gone.

Arcing her back and twisting sideways she was able to bring her feet up, the jagged spurs of bones along the lower part of her legs narrowly missing his stomach. He had no choice but to let go and shove her away from him. She landed in a heap several feet away and thrashed her way back to her feet.

Hissing and moaning she staggered uncertainly towards him.

Lulled into letting his guard down by how uneventful all the previous visits had been he'd made a terrible mistake and let her get between him and the door. Worse, as part of the security measures the door could only be opened from the outside. By now there was bound to be someone there waiting for him, but the fact that he'd long ago stopped waiting for anyone to accompany him before going in to visit Jill meant that there was no guarantee. Even if there was someone there it wasn't like they were going to open the door when Jill was the one closest to it.

As Jill drew nearer he started inching to the side, hoping that there would be enough space for him to slip past her.

Bringing his hands up he forced himself to smile, "Jill, calm down. It's going to be okay, we can…"

It was the wrong thing to say. Even if there was something left of her, and he suspected there was, there was an obvious point she was trying to make, one she had been attempting to get across to him for months, one that he'd been deliberately ignoring. Letting out a gurgling howl she lunged at him and he dodged to the side, hitting the wall in an attempt to stay out of range of her claws. There was room to get by, but not quite enough and the tips of her claws grazed his arm.

He ran, nearly slipping on the wet floor. Jill followed after him, drawing in deep, choking breaths as she caught the scent of blood in the air.

The door opened a crack and he lunged forward, inches ahead of Jill's claws. Unfortunately for him, the door opened into the room, something that he hadn't given much thought to previously and when he made it there his momentum was enough to force the door shut. Letting out a noise that could have just as easily been hysterical laughter or frantic sobbing, Jill hooked her claws into his shoulders and started pulling him back.

The door opened again and he grabbed it, pulling himself forward and dragging Jill, whose claws remained firmly lodged in place, along with him.

Three scientists and the EATM doctor, who was, of all things, wielding a push broom were waiting for him. Two of the scientists grabbed him and the EATM doctor proved she knew what she was doing by stepping forward and slamming the head of the broom upward against Jill's arms, breaking her hold on him as well as a number of bones if the crunching noises he could hear were anything to go by. Another push with the broom, this one aimed at the middle of Jill's chest and Jill was forced back a step. With a practiced flip of the wrist the EATM doctor turned the broom sideways and pulled it back while the third scientist closed the door.

The door clicked shut and a chime started, letting them know that the decontamination sequence was beginning.

Chris looked around dazedly, the pain from his injuries starting to make itself known. There was blood everywhere and when he tried to move his left arm it felt like there was something lodged in his shoulder. Probably part of one of Jill's claws, he'd seen firsthand how brittle the bones of t-Abyss mutants were.

The EATM doctor glared daggers at him, "You're an idiot, the way you were holding onto it like that."

He looked back at the door and saw that it was streaked with slime and smeared with blood. He could hear Jill on the other side, screaming and slamming against the door.

Yes, he had been, Jill had made that abundantly clear. He'd learned his lesson though, painful as it was going to be, it was time for him to let go.


	6. The Truth

**Summary:** Chris and Piers learn the true purpose of the C-virus, the original reason for its creation.

 **Characters:** Chris Redfield, Piers Nivans

 **Notes:** While not the strangest thing I've ever written, probably one of the strangest that I've actually posted. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to post it at first, but it went over fairly well with my test readers.

o0o

During the frantic search for the keycards, distracted by the rasklapanje flooding in from all directions they hadn't noticed it, which was understandable since the first warning was a subtle change to the motion of the carrier. It was though a massive amount of weight was redistributing itself throughout the ship, but it was a slow process and they had far more pressing things to deal with, like getting away from over half a dozen unkillable B.O.W.s. Over all the other noise they never heard the fans of the ventilation system stutter and shut down, nor did they see the thin gray ooze that started seeping out of the vents. The air quickly became oppressively hot and humid in the confines of the ship's corridors, but they were too busy trying to get out and stop Ada Wong's mad plan to pay it any mind.

By the time the first spray of fine mist burst out of the no longer silent vents they were already too drenched with their own sweat and the slime from the B.O.W.s to notice. The mist hung shimmering in the air, slowly settling to the floor, but not before they were thoroughly coated. Even if they'd managed to avoid the initial spray, several more followed as what was happening elsewhere in the ship continued. With everything else going on it was no wonder they didn't feel the ship's movements grow sluggish or realize what was lingering in the very air they were breathing in.

It wasn't until they'd made it to the underwater research facility that either of them noticed anything out of the ordinary and by that point it had already begun. Even then they probably wouldn't have noticed anything was wrong until much later if not for one simple thing. They'd arrived at the top of the facility and the elevator they needed to use to get down was already at the bottom of the facility, several hundred feet below.

Chris was the first to notice that despite the cool breeze blowing over the ocean he was dripping with sweat, far more than the short jog to the elevator could account for. Something was wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it just yet.

"Piers?"

Next to him the lieutenant had taken off his scarf "Yeah?"

"Are you okay?" it was probably the most forced sounding question he'd ever asked, but he had no idea what else to say, how to describe the subtle sense of wrongness he felt.

Piers used his scarf to try and wipe the sweat from his forehead, only succeeding in smearing dirt from the scarf across his face, "Yeah, just give me a sec."

He did sound winded, so maybe it was just all they'd been through catching up with them. Maybe he was reading too much into little things, but the sight of the dirt streaked across Piers' face brought back memories of Edonia. Finn and all the others looking at him pleadingly as slime slowly coated them. It was a vision that had returned to him countless times in nightmares. Then just hours ago poor Marco. He couldn't shake the feeling that once again he was going to be forced to watch as one of his men died in the most horrific way imaginable.

"What about you?" Piers' question interrupted his thoughts.

"What about what?" he asked as he shook his head, drops of sweat flying in all directions. It was like someone had dumped a bucket of water over his head.

Meanwhile Piers had given up on trying to wipe his face and was wringing out his sodden scarf, "Are you okay?"

The question served as a reminder that whatever was happening was happening to both of them, but how? They hadn't been injected like the others and they'd been out of range when the gas was released on the city, hadn't they?

"Captain?"

Chris shrugged. Running a hand through his hair he grimaced as he felt the moisture clumping it together. He tried to shake it off his fingers by flicking his hand, but the fluid was starting to turn viscous and remained coating his fingers.

"I don't know," he said at last, exhaling sharply in an attempt to keep his nose clear.

Piers must have realized what was happening to them at that point because the lieutenant turned to him and shook his head, "Is this it then?"

"Maybe," Chris wiped his hands over his arms and watched as strands of slime pulled away from his skin, "I just never expected it to end like this."

He expected Piers to protest, but what was there he could hope to say in a situation like this?

Instead Piers gave him a sickly smile, his features seeming to shimmer and distort as the slime coating them stated to turn opaque, "If I'd known it would end like this I wouldn't have –"

"No," Chris cut him off. He'd had enough guilt of his own that the last thing he wanted to deal with was Piers', "What happened happened, nothing's going to change that. We've got to…"

What exactly? They probably only had minutes left and of all the ways he'd imagined dying, this wasn't one of them. He'd always believed that when it happened it would be a flash of pain and then nothing, if there was even time to feel pain. The waiting, even if it wouldn't be long, was the worst part. He knew exactly what was happening and was powerless to stop it.

A harsh buzzing sound announced the elevator's arrival and they turned as one to look. 'What now?' was the unspoken question.

"You know," Piers took a step forward as the elevator doors opened, "We might still be able to give Neo-Umbrella one hell of a nasty surprise."

That was true, but there was something the lieutenant was forgetting, "What if we run into Sherry and Jake?"

"I was thinking about that too, but the way I see it, it's not going to be a problem," Piers laughed darkly.

"Oh?" Chis asked, not wanting to let Piers down by failing to go along with whatever morbid joke he was so clearly trying to make.

"Yeah, I figure we'll be distracted enough trying to eat Muller that Sherry should have enough time to get away."

He laughed, more because of how serious Piers sounded, than at the fairly bad joke, "You really don't like him, do you?"

"No, I don't," Piers shrugged, "And if I'm going to end up a B.O.W. I might as well hope that I get the chance to jump that creepy mercenary bastard and maul him. The FBC obviously has some interest in him and that's enough for me."

Both the BSAA and the FBC had fairly checkered pasts, but that wasn't something Chris wanted to bring up at a time like this mostly because Piers had a point. They got on the elevator and watched as the door closed behind them. Piers leaned against the wall and slowly slid to the floor, leaving a trail of slime on the wall behind him.

It was getting hard to see through the mess and Chris kept having to rub at his eyes to keep them clear.

"Something's wrong."

He hadn't realized he'd spoken out loud until Piers responded with a snort.

"How about everything's wrong?" the lieutenant's voice cracked as he spoke.

"That's not what I mean," Chris shook his head sending slime flying in all directions, "This isn't how it happened with the others."

There was more that he'd planned on saying, but he had to stop to adjust his vest, which was soaked through and sitting all wrong across his shoulders. It felt like he was swimming in his gear, literally considering how thoroughly drenched he was. When he took a step his feet made squelching noises in his boots.

Piers was right. Everything was wrong.

"Get up."

Piers followed the order without question, though he too stopped to squirm in his gear. The Lieutenant looked taller, except that didn't make any sense, not with the way his uniform was hanging off of him. All the slime pouring off of them had to come from somewhere…they were both losing mass, shrinking.

How far was it going to go?

The slime wasn't hardening into a shell, but it wasn't stopping either. Was it some new virus then? Some failed transformation? Were they both going to melt away to nothing?

Was that a better fate than what had happened to his men?

Piers squinted at him and rubbed at his eyes to clear the ooze away. It worked for a moment, long enough for Chris to see that there was something off about his features, especially around his eyes and nose, then the slime covered them again. Piers went back to rubbing at his face.

"What the hell?"

Chris assumed that Piers' exclamation was due to him feeling whatever it was that was wrong, but instead he looked directly at him.

"Captain?" he gasped, "This makes no sense."

His voice cracked again as he spoke the last word and he broke into a fit of coughing. Clutching his chest he spat out a clump of slime and took a deep breath. Piers looked at him helplessly, but all Chris could do was stare. It was hard to be sure, but the way Pier's uniform was clinging to him, it looked like whatever was wrong was affecting his whole body, especially around his chest and shoulders. His proportions looked off, except at the same time there was something familiar about it. It was hard to tell, but he looked thinner and…

Wondering if the same or similar changes were happening to him Chris ran his hands over himself and felt…

His arms, he'd been so distracted by the slime dripping off of them that he hadn't actually looked at them. It was like the muscle was melting away, leaving them…he wasn't sure exactly, thinner, more delicate looking. He pulled off his gloves, not sure what he expected to see.

 _Those aren't my hands._

That was the only thing he could think when he saw them. They weren't his hands, but they weren't the hands of a monster either, no raw muscle or exposed bone. If they were melting it was a much cleaner and far less painful process than he would have anticipated.

He looked at Piers again. The lieutenant had his hands pressed to his chest, a look of absolute horror written across his features as he whispered frantically to himself, "No, no, this can't be happening."

His words rose into a shrill scream as he fell to the floor clutching his stomach.

Things were starting to fall into place, he wished that they weren't, but it almost made sense.

Trying not to think about what could possibly have Piers screaming like that, because the changes so far hadn't been painful, just disconcerting, Chris brought his hands to his chest in time feel the muscle there…softening? Vanishing might have been a more accurate way of putting it, but he couldn't be sure. Something remained and it felt both alien and disturbingly familiar.

Half knowing what he was going to find he started taking off his vest, which by that point felt like it was at least two sizes too big for him. Underneath his shirt hung off of him like a tent except where the soaking wet fabric was clinging to…

He lifted his shirt even though it was completely unnecessary.

No trace of muscle remained, more than that…

From the floor Piers had recovered enough to let out a hysterical laugh. It was all he could do to keep from joining in when he felt a strange, slithering sensation starting in his stomach. Somehow he knew that the process was almost over and the last changes were about to take place

He screamed, he wasn't ashamed to admit that. He screamed well before the pain hit because unlike Piers he was anticipating what was about to happen. The pain hit like a punch to the gut, not anywhere near as bad as he'd expected, but somehow worse for knowing what it meant.

Then it was over. He could feel the slime thinning, dripping off him like water.

It was so stupid, so many instances of double and triple-crosses, why was this such a surprise? Hell, compared to the Wesker project this probably made some sort of perverse sense.

Probably.

The elevator buzzed once again and the doors started to open.

Piers stopped laughing and looked at him with dark, almond shaped eyes, delicate features twisting into a wry smile that looked very out of place on a face like that, "I can tell you're thinking something so just say it already."

His voice was soft and husky, strange, yet terribly familiar, enough so that Chris couldn't help but grimace.

"It's just…" he trailed off at the sound of his own voice, so very similar to the way Piers now sounded, "You think that maybe this whole Neo-Umbrella thing is a set up by someone trying to frame Ada?"

Piers let out what sounded like a sigh of relief.

"What was that about?" now it was Chris' turn to demand a response.

"Nothing," Piers shook his head and started to untie then retie his boots in an attempt to get them to fit properly again. It was a futile effort, though he was in far better shape than Chris was in terms of what he was wearing still fitting, "I was just worried that you were going to bring up my earlier comment about wanting to make a meal of Muller."

Chris stared at him blankly for a moment, then burst out laughing as the realization about what that could imply in consideration of their current situation.

Piers shook his head, then joined in.

For a long time the two BSAA agents, now perfect replicas of the infamous spy Ada Wong, sat in the elevator, helpless with laughter.


	7. Hearts and Minds

**Summary:** Well after the events of RE6 a squad of BSAA operatives has to deal with new challenges facing them in the rapidly changing world of bioterror.

 **Characters:** An assortment of Original Characters.

 **Notes:** The idea came from a discussion about how in each game the scale of the threat increases. I decided to run with that, extrapolating on things that may have happened after RE6. Specifically the focus is on how B.O.W.s and different viral agents are bound to become increasingly common, to the point where they become a fact of life.

o0o

It was purely for good publicity, something the BSAA sorely needed in the brave new world of counter bioterrorism operations.

As part of a joint effort that could only have been conceived through politicking at its finest, Lieutenant Yannick Khoroushi and his squad had been pulled away from combat and were providing security for some TerraSave volunteers in the war torn nation of Transnistria. It was paradoxically boring as hell while still managing to be nerve wracking. With so much nothing to do there were far too many opportunities for interesting, new screw-ups to happen and there were plenty of cameras around to catch every moment of it, from multiple angles, complete with sound.

He had good reason to believe that his squad, of all the ones helping out in Transnistria, had been chosen because they were the most photogenic and less likely than most to make fools of themselves on camera. The film clip in which a certain famous BSAA operative gave a completely honest answer after being ambushed by a reporter had become an internet sensation, something the higher-ups in the BSAA were desperate to keep from happening again. Khoroushi had thought the video was hilarious, but the official position was that it was embarrassing, so he had to treat it as such and do everything in his power to prevent another such incident. Which did nothing to change the fact that the video was hilarious.

They were there for good publicity, but it felt more like a test of endurance, one that some of his men were handling far better than others.

"I hate cameras," Abrahams muttered darkly, as he ducked his head and turned away to avoid being filmed by one of the few crews more focused on the BSAA soldiers than the TerraSave activists.

Khoroushi couldn't help but notice that Abrahams had his gasmask on, even though they were several dozen miles from any of the areas where reports of the use of airborne chemical or biological agents had occurred. The lengths the man would go to in order to avoid being filmed were astounding. Earlier Khoroushi had caught him actually trying to hide from the news crews.

In sharp contrast to Abrahams' open displeasure, Burke and Scavoni were actively hamming it up for the news crews, getting dangerously close to the point of making fools of themselves by allowing a group of little kids to pull them into a game of football. Khoroushi didn't have to see the ball to know it had the TerraSave logo on it because the organization was brilliant that way. Provide food, medicine and whatever else was needed, then give toys covered in their logo to any kids that showed up. It was one of the things that he disliked about the humanitarian organization, that they put as much effort into publicity and brand name recognition as they did to actually helping people.

And on that thought, Fisher and Rostam were either showing off for the kids or displaying open contempt for TerraSave's publicity strategy, possibly both. By the looks of things Fisher had gotten the kids to try and burst tennis balls, which were also being handed out by TerraSave. If nothing else it was amusing to watch. There was a whole bunch of stomping and shouting as the kids quickly decided that it was impossible, then Rostam got one of the kids to toss a ball to him and he burst it one handed, one of his favorite stupid tricks to impress kids. When told the nature of this assignment he'd come up with a whole routine. Khoroushi had a feeling that he'd gotten help from the rest of the squad, because though Rostam made no attempt to hide the fact that he didn't care for TerraSave, he wasn't anywhere near clever enough to start a game of dodgeball with tennis balls. Convincing the kids that the nearest TerraSave member, an artificially cheery young woman who was, at the moment of the incident, smiling at a camera, wanted to join in was also thoroughly beyond him.

Abrahams continued griping, "Given the choice between being here and being –" he stopped at the sight of the woman from TerraSave being pelted by tennis balls thrown by a swarm of laughing, screaming kids, "Oh I hope they're filming that live."

"Hey mister BSAA! Hey mister BSAA!" A group of the kids had pulled away from their little football game to swarm around Abrahams to babble excitedly at him in broken English.

"Are there any cameras?" he glanced around nervously.

"Plenty," Khoroushi rolled his eyes, "So don't go over and kill Burke. It'll look really bad on the nightly news."

As though he knew that he was being talked about Burke turned to wave at them, an enormous grin plastered on his face.

Abrahams flipped him the bird.

Taking a guess as to what was to follow Khoroushi moved so that he was standing between Abrahams and the nearest film crew. He didn't know much Russian beyond a few choice bits of profanity, but he'd picked up a few terms and the kids were using at least some English so he had the basic idea of what was going on. It seemed that Abrahams' gasmask was causing quite the stir with the kids and he knew Burke well enough by this point to know exactly why.

Sure enough, when Abrahams knelt down so that he was at eyelevel with the kids they jumped back, giggling and shouting in feigned fear. The bravest of the group came forward, reached out like they might touch his mask only to jump back when Abrahams moved to take the mask off. More giggling and shouting followed, half of the group waiting eagerly, the other half begging him not to.

When he finally did the kids went wild, like Abrahams' face was the most amazing and shocking thing they'd ever seen. Then again, it might have been since Burke had made a game of telling kids that Abrahams wore a mask because he was a J'avo and the discovery that Abrahams was human might have caught them off guard. It wasn't like they hadn't seen J'avo before though. At least ten percent of the population in Transnistria were infected with the C-virus in one way or another, probably more by this point with the flood of mercenaries and contractors being brought in to supplement the local military.

Listening in on what Abrahams was telling the kids Khoroushi had to struggle to keep from laughing. Despite obviously not being a J'avo about half of the kids still seemed to think that Abrahams was one. The other half was insisting that he couldn't be because he was BSAA and the BSAA didn't use B.O.W.s. It made him wonder what the kids considered B.O.W.s since in his mind J'avo hardly counted. A good number of the ones that had shown up since Edonia and Lanshiang had suffered physical mutations and were fine mentally. There were even a few BSAA operatives that had ended up infected through unknown means following the cleanup in Lanshiang and he'd gotten the chance to work alongside some of them. Seeing what they were capable of had been an interesting experience to say the least and enough to make him understand part of the reason global restrictions on the use of B.O.W.s had been relaxed somewhat.

And thinking of things being relaxed…

"Fisher!"

The BSAA operative looked at the Lieutenant and smiled helplessly, "You just told me to keep Burke out of trouble. Since he's not trying to pick up J'avo hookers I think I did right. You know how he and Rostam egg each other on."

What he said was true, Burke hadn't started anything for once, but Rostam on the other hand was taking showing off for the kids a little too far. In a surprisingly short amount of time he'd managed to strip off his tactical vest and was encouraging one of the kids to try and pick it up.

Abandoning Abrahams to the swarm of kids who were still in awe of the fact that he only had two eyes, Khoroushi went over to prepare to handle the situation with Rostam and the kids surrounding him.

By the time he got there one of the kids, a particularly daring little boy, was trying and failing to lift Rostam's vest. The kid was making a good effort though, having managed to drag it a few feet during his attempts, which was impressive since the vest had to weigh a good amount more than he did.

"What are you doing?" he kept his tone even and did everything in his power to radiate calm confidence because the media, much like certain types of B.O.W., could detect anxiety.

Rostam looked down and gave him a huge shit-eating grin, a near perfect imitation of Burke's earlier smile, except for Rostam's going back too far on the left side. A month or so back Rostam had gotten clawed pretty badly by a hunter and the injuries to his face hadn't healed properly. Scavoni claimed that it was because Rostam wouldn't stop talking long enough to let it heal and Khoroushi was inclined to agree. When he'd first met Rostam he'd been caught off guard by how much he had to say in most situations.

Still grinning Rostam bent down to pick up his vest, but instead of putting it back on he held it up so the kid could try and slip into it, "Here."

"Not a good idea Rostam," Khoroushi tried to remain calm and not imagine what would happen if Rostam let go of the vest. Yeah it was designed for even distribution of weight, but what happened when you dropped over a hundred pounds of evenly distributed weight on a little kid? He wasn't sure and he didn't want to find out. The BSAA was having enough problems with its image after what had happened in during the outbreak in the Principality of Taured. The last thing they needed was a kid getting hurt at what amounted to a publicity stunt where they were trying to piggyback on TerraSave's recent surge in popularity. He could see the headlines now 'Child Injured When BSAA Tyrant Goes Berserk' because that was how the media always spun stuff like that.

Rostam shrugged and lowered the vest slightly, just enough for the kid to feel the weight, but not enough to knock him on his ass. The kid's eyes went wide and he wiggled out of the vest and ran back to his laughing friends. Rostam let the vest drop and motioned for another kid to try.

Khoroushi picked the vest himself, the effort it took prompting giggles and cheers from the kids and held it up for Rostam to take.

Rostam shook his head and made a dismissive gesture, "Shit's heavy."

Fisher looked at him nervously, but Khoroushi gave a slight shake of his head. The profanity wasn't because Rostam was upset, it was just one of Rostam's many quirks and probably part of the reason it had supposedly taken him an unusually long time to go through reacclimation training. Tyrants weren't cleared for deployment if they showed any signs of aggression in inappropriate contexts and excessive profanity was considered a warning sign. With Rostam it was just part of who he was, which didn't mean that his tendency quietly growl 'fuck' over the slightest thing wasn't unnerving. They'd been told not to worry about it, but it was difficult.

"I'm not the one who makes procedure, I just follow it," Khoroushi handed the vest to Rostam with a sigh.

Rostam made a show of looking around for anything that might be a danger to him before taking the vest. It was remarkable how he managed to be sarcastic without needing to say a word, not that Khoroushi disagreed with him in this situation. Body armor was great when you were under attack, but during a publicity stunt like this it was just so much pointless weight and what they gave to the Tyrants was disproportionately heavy since they didn't have to carry much else in the way of gear and they were very likely to end up fighting B.O.W.s in close quarters.

In an action that might have been insubordination on Rostam's part, or the result of failure to make himself clear on Khoroushi's part, the Tyrant passed the vest to a group of three kids who were hardly able to hold it up between the lot of them. This prompted more cheering and laughter from the crowd, enough that they were starting to draw in kids from the other group, the ones who'd previously been too afraid of Rostam to go anywhere near him. One of the new arrivals tossed a tennis ball to Rostam. He caught it and tossed it back. More laughter. Another kid tossed a ball and Rostam threw that one back as well. The next kid threw one to Fisher, who was caught off guard and fumbled it. Khoroushi caught the first one thrown at him, but the next came before he was ready and without warning the game of dodgeball that Fisher had instigated resumed.

"Next time Fisher," Khoroushi growled between dodging tennis balls, "I'm going to put Rostam in charge of keeping you out of trouble."

"This wasn't my idea!" Fisher said as he took cover behind Rostam, "The little yard apes started it on their own!"

Rostam was managing slightly better, if only because he didn't seemed bothered by the bombardment. He caught the ones he could and let the rest bounce off while he roared with laughter.

Out of the corner of his eye Khoroushi thought he saw Burke and Scavoni exchanging a high-five, but it was hard to tell in all the confusion. This wasn't what he'd signed up for when he joined the BSAA. Then again working alongside a B.O.W. hadn't been part of the plan either, but when the U.S. government started its own Tyrant program in response to Russia's experiments with the t-Virus the BSAA had gotten dragged in, at first to oversee the mess and then to deal with its results. Apparently the idiots in charge of the program hadn't figured out what to do past the step of making Tyrants and they'd ended up with a large number of potentially dangerous B.O.W.s that had to be used for something to justify the program. Somehow, for reasons that probably made sense to someone somewhere, that something ended up being the BSAA's responsibility. An agreement was reached and all U.S. made Tyrants ended up on permanent loan to the BSAA.

The open secret was that the BSAA had been, and still was, the primary source of volunteers for the program, which was the reason for the loans. What far fewer people knew was the reason for it, that one of the first volunteers for the program had been a BSAA member and that several others had followed suit, setting an uncomfortable precedent. Rumors that the Tyrants were less cooperative with teams from other organizations were just that, rumors. Everyone knew that the Tyrants had no memory of who they were before the program. Rostam's seeming dislike of TerraSave was easily explained as something he had picked up from the rest of the squad.

How it happened didn't really matter, not when the end result was that Khoroushi was now responsible for the public image of his own organization and that of the U.S. Tyrant program thanks to having been assigned Rostam.

At least Rostam was cooperative as far as Tyrants went. Khoroushi had heard some horror stories about ones that couldn't handle any sort of downtime and had to be constantly kept busy or else they got destructive. Then again, regular soldiers could get pretty destructive during downtime if they were bored and creative enough, Burke and Scavoni being perfect examples. It probably reflected poorly on his squad that Rostam wasn't the member he worried about the most, which made the whole impromptu publicity stunt all the more nerve wracking.

One of the film crews had moved in to watch the game the kids and Rostam were playing. Sometimes the Tyrant would catch a ball and throw it back, gently enough that the kid it was aimed at had no trouble catching it, other times he would roar and take a few steps forward, prompting the kids to scream and run back an equal distance. Whenever he took a step back they'd surge forward, the most daring of the group actually reaching out to touch him. He held a hand out to them, encouraging them.

Before long the game changed and the kids thankfully were no longer tossing tennis balls and anything else that they could find, instead they were running up to Rostam and trying to high-five him. He'd hold his hand out and at the last moment lift it up, well out of their reach. One little girl, knowing what was going to happen, took a running start to climb up Rostam's leg, getting as high as she could before jumping for Rostam's arm.

Rostam caught her and effortlessly lifted her up, placing the girl on his shoulder, much to the delight of rest of the children.

At this point the spectacle finally caught the attention of one of the local militia members and the man ran over to start yelling at the kids. The crowd dispersed, parents coming to get the few stragglers and Rostam handed the little girl down to her concerned and very apologetic mother, not that Rostam could understand a word she was saying. Khoroushi had been warned that the average Tyrant understood what was said around them much better than people assumed. It was a warning he'd made sure the others understood and Burke had gone on to thoroughly test. The results had been alarming to say the least, but Khoroushi was certain that Rostam hadn't managed to pick up Russian yet, especially not the local dialect.

With the fun over Rostam picked up his vest and put it back on as though nothing had happened. Noticing that Khoroushi and Fisher were both still watching him he shrugged and grinned, "Kids are fun."

One of the last kids to leave nearly ran into the Tyrant, but managed to dodge to the side at the last possible moment. Rostam's expression was unreadable as he turned to watch the kid retreat. Khoroushi couldn't help but tense, unsure if the Tyrant was going to slip up and give chase.

A moment later Abrahams hurried over, "That little bastard took my gasmask!"

The noise Rostam made could have just as easily been a growl or a laugh.


	8. The Little Things That Matter

**Summary:** An AU of Code Veronica in which things turn out slightly better for Steve Burnside.

 **Characters:** Claire Redfield, Steve Burnside, Chris Redfield

 **Notes:** Claire and Steve is a popular pairing in the fandom so I decided to try my hand at something featuring the two of them. Much to my surprise I discovered that I like Steve as a character a lot more than I expected. As a result this is an idea that I might do more with in the future.

o0o

Steve was alive, but barely conscious when Claire freed him from the restraints holding him in the chair. As soon as the strap across his chest was released he slumped to the floor, muttering about Alexia's experiments and being cold and hungry. When she tried to help him to his feet he fell on her, dragging both of them back to the floor.

He managed a dazed smile, muttered something unintelligible, before his eyes went wide and he pushed himself away from her.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but don't worry, I'm okay. Really," he whimpered, staggering back from her even as she pushed herself to her feet.

"Don't worry about it," she figured that he was talking about how he'd accidently groped her when he landed on her. At least she assumed it was an accident, "We've got to get out of here."

"Yeah," he glanced around nervously, then smiled, "I'll lead the way."

She smiled back at him, but she wasn't sure that he noticed as he pushed past her and started down the hall. He was hardly able to stand on his own, weaving back and forth drunkenly, but he was already mostly back to his cocksure self, pushing her hand away every time she tried to help steady him. Whatever he'd been through had clearly left him shaken despite his efforts to hide it.

Reaching the end of the hall he fell against the door, only to jump back when something thudded against it.

"Maybe…" he looked at her out of the corners of his eyes, "You should give me a gun so I can clear the way."

"I think you should sit this one out," Claire reached out for him and again he flinched away, glaring at her with an accusing expression, "Once you're feeling better I'll let you take care of things, but until then I'll have to manage."

"Sure," he nodded and stepped back as there was another thud from the other side of the door, "Be careful though."

It took all her restraint not to laugh at how pathetically grateful he looked that she wasn't stating the obvious, that in the condition he was in he probably couldn't even hold a gun straight, not to mention she was a better shot to begin with. Steve was such an innocent, even after everything he'd been through. He was very much like a little boy trying to look tough to impress her despite everything. That innocence was what she found so endearing though, how it was so obvious that his tough act was just that, an act.

Once he was far enough back that he wouldn't be in the way she opened the door, expecting two, maybe three zombies to be on the other side. What she didn't expect was half a dozen of them to come swarming at her.

The first two she was able to take out with carefully placed headshots before they were too close for comfort. Her third shot went wild as she jumped back to avoid one of them falling on her, pushed forward by the others behind it. The next shots she fired were aimed at slowing the ones nearest to her rather than killing them outright. If there was one constant it was that zombies weren't good at avoiding obstacles, and if she was lucky she could keep them tripping over each other until she was able to line up the shots needed to do actual damage. Long as the hallway was, following the pattern of fire, back away, reload wouldn't be any trouble.

Another headshot and another zombie fell and lay still.

One of the ones that fell, but was still moving grabbed at her legs and she was barely able to jump out of the way in time.

"I got this one!"

And before she could say anything Steve had rushed forward and grabbed it, pulling it back away from her.

She tried not to worry, even in the shape he was in he'd probably be able to finish off one nearly disabled zombie and at the very least his dragging it out of the way would keep her from tripping over it as she took care of the last two.

Or what she'd thought were the last two. Another pair of zombies was lurching through the door, though they were having difficulty getting over the bodies of their fallen fellows.

When another zombie followed after them she realized that things might not be as easy as she'd hoped. At least the pile of bodies in the hall had them moving slow enough that she had the time she needed to line up headshots and pick them off one at a time.

By the time it was over she counted at least a dozen dead zombies, possibly more. It was hard to tell with the way they were piled on top of each other. The way some of them were still twitching didn't help much either. Tempting as it was to shoot each of the livelier ones one more time, she was running low on ammo and there was no telling what they'd encounter next. A few of the bodies were in fatigues though, so they might have some ammo on them, if she was feeling brave enough to search them.

What if she reached out and one of them grabbed her?

"Steve, could you give me a hand?" she felt bad about asking him to help with something like that, but if one of them took a swipe at him she was sure she could kill it before it did any harm.

Steve didn't reply.

Had she misjudged the condition he was in or how badly damaged the zombie was? Afraid of what she might see she turned around.

The sight that greeted her was far worse than anything she'd been expecting.

Steve was crouched at the far end of the hall, leaning over the zombie and frantically tearing into it with his hands and teeth, pulling away chunks of meat and gulping them down. All his attention was on the zombie as he ate with a terrifying desperation.

"Steve!"

He looked up at her, his face smeared with blood as he swallowed the current mouthful without chewing. His hands continued to work through the zombie's torso, pulling free coils of its intestines.

"I'm feeling a little better," he smiled at her, the faintest ghost of his usual confident grin, "Except…"

Then he went back to his meal, gulping down chunks of meat and organs as fast as he could get them into his mouth.

All logic dictated that she should shoot him. Alexia had clearly infected him with something, if what he was doing hadn't been enough evidence of that, the yellowish tint to his eyes was more than enough proof. There was something terribly wrong with him and it was only going to get worse, yet she hesitated. He wasn't trying to attack her, at least not yet a certain cynical corner of her mind amended, so maybe there wasn't any reason to shoot him. If she wanted she could probably just leave him and…then what? She'd be killing him either way, shooting him herself or leaving him to die in the research base when something he couldn't defend himself against found him. Something, or someone.

Maybe what he'd been infected with wasn't that bad. Maybe there was a cure for it somewhere in the base and if she were to find it everything would be alright. That sort of thing wasn't exactly without precedent after all.

Cautiously she approached him and was able to see that, in addition to his eyes, there were other subtle changes. Some of his fingers, though not all of them, were tipped with claws and there were discolored patches on his arms and face. The way his already tight shirt was stretched across his shoulders and back hinted at additional, still hidden, changes.

In between mouthfuls he looked up at her. She could see where his teeth were being pushed out of place by a growing set of fangs. There was a pleading look in his eyes.

"Steve," she fought back nausea, unable to look away as he ate, "Could you give me a hand?"

"Claire," between fangs and the fact that he didn't stop tearing into the zombie as he spoke his response was hardly more than a growl, then he swallowed and continued, "I can't stop."

"We need to hurry!" the temptation to grab him and try and pull him away from the zombie was strong, but she was afraid to touch him. It was too easy to imagine him snapping at her like a rabid dog and the way he had moved so that he was crouched protectively over the mangled remains of the zombie wasn't helping the image.

"I told you," he snapped, "I can't stop."

"What do you mean?" she took a step back wondering once again if she was going to need to shoot him.

His claws raked through the already half dismembered carcass, "I'm starving! When you first found me I told you to leave me because…"

He went back to tearing into the zombie with renewed ferocity.

That was not the answer she'd been hoping for, but what else had she expected?

"You didn't hurt me though!" she knew she was grasping at straws, but it was something.

He nodded, but didn't stop.

"There might be a cure."

He shook his head.

"You don't know that," she pleaded, he stopped to look at her and emboldened by what might have bene a hopeful expression, she continued, "I'm almost out of ammo and if there are any more zombies we'll be in trouble. Can you help me search the bodies?"

Steve looked past her, his gaze falling on the dead zombies. Taking a deep breath he slowly stood up. He still wasn't too steady on his feet and the thought that he might fall terrified her. Would he expect her to catch him? Reach out for her with those claws?

Instead he leaned against the wall and started talking, "Okay, I can do that. That's not too hard. It'll give me something to keep focused on."

She couldn't tell if he was trying to explain things to her or reassure himself.

"Some of them look like security or something," she ignored his comment and gestured at the zombies, "I figure they might have ammo on them."

"Good idea," when he was moving it was easier to see just how badly wrong things were with him, one shoulder was sitting considerably higher than the other and his already thin arms looked positively skeletal, "One of them might still have a gun. If we're both armed we'll be safer. I can clear the halls and you can keep an eye on my back, make sure nothing comes up behind us."

He trailed off and rubbed at his right wrist, adjusting the straps of the brace he wore. It was hard to tell, but it looked like he was trying to move it to conceal one of the greenish patches on his arm. Sure enough when he caught her looking at him he turned away from her, using his hand to try and cover a particularly large discolored area on the upper part of his arm.

To his credit he did try to help, though it was obvious how badly distracted he was. She could hear him as she found what ammunition she could and she tried her best to ignore him.

"Hey! Look what I found!"

That he sounded so excited and had actually stopped long enough to comment had her afraid to look. It was either some ridiculously large caliber gun or something automatic that ate through bullets like… Either was she was sure it would be something useless.

Again she got a surprise, though this time it was a pleasant one.

He was holding up a set of keys that he'd pulled off what appeared to have at one point been a maintenance worker. She'd been so focused on finding more ammunition that she hadn't even considered looking for anything else.

When they were done looking the keys were probably the best find, though Steve had also found himself a handgun and she grudgingly shared some of her limited ammo with him. Getting him to leave the bodies was another matter entirely. He understood that they had to hurry and that every moment they waited they were in danger, but he seemed physically incapable of stopping himself.

At a loss she tried grabbing him and physically pulling him away from the bodies. His response was to jerk away and snap at her with a very impressive set of newly grown fangs.

They both backed away from each other after that. After a very long and tense silence Steve was the first to speak, "I'll catch up later."

Claire found herself torn, it was obvious that she couldn't fully trust him, not with what had happened to him, what was still happening, but she didn't want to leave him. She'd been through too much already, had to leave too much behind and Steve was the closest thing she had to a friend anymore. Besides, none of what had happened to him had been his fault, they were both victims of Umbrella, thrown together by circumstance and luck.

"I thought you said you'd protect me," it was a low blow and she knew it.

Steve recoiled as though he'd been struck, looking at her accusingly for turning his own words back on him. He bared his fangs in a sickly grimace as he looked back and forth between her and the dead zombies. Finally he closed his eyes and stood up.

"Fine," opening his eyes he took a step forward, staring fixedly at the door. His movements were stiff, robotic as he avoided looking at the floor of her, "But keep back just in case."

There were so many things he could have meant by that, but Claire was sure she knew exactly what he worried might happen. She wanted to reassure him, but how could she be certain herself? It was better to trust him than try and fool herself. So she followed him, trying not to think about what, or who, might be waiting for them in the compound.

As they got farther from the bodies and the temptation he began to relax, at least until something deep within the compound shifted. She could feel the rumbling through the floor and Steve stopped to lean against the wall.

"We need to find a way out of here," he hissed through clenched teeth.

He was in pain, not just from hunger, but from the changes wracking his body. She could see his muscles twitching, the tendons in his arms and hands standing out like wires beneath his skin.

"Once we find a cure we'll find my brother and-"

"No!" he cut her off, slamming his fist against the wall so hard that bits of plaster flaked away. She actually heard the bones in his hand crack, but he didn't seem to notice, "If that psyco is still here there's no telling what she'll do. I tried to fight her off when she found me and she picked me up and tossed me against the wall like I didn't weight anything at all. Then she…We don't stand a chance against her. Besides, there's no way to fix this."

"That's not true!" she fought the desire to run up and grab him, to force him to look at her while she explained what had happened with Sherry to him, but she was too afraid of what would happen, what she would see. Instead she kept her distance and continued, "There was a little girl-"

"Was it this bad?" he cut her off again, though this time he turned to face her. His eyes had deepened from yellow to amber and his mouth was forced open by long, curving fangs. There was a patch of gray-green skin along his neck now, inching up towards the bottom of his face, "Don't treat me like a little kid, just tell me, was it this bad?"

"No," little as she liked to admit it, he was probably right. What had happened with Sherry hadn't been anything like this, "But there might still be something here. No one in their right mind would make something like this without a way to reverse it!"

"I'm not stupid," the corners of his mouth twitched up in a sad smile, "My dad told me about the stuff they were working on. I don't think anyone running the show was in their right mind."

"We don't know," she pleaded.

Somewhere close by a door slammed.

They both froze, crazy as everything was, there were some constants that remained, one of them being that zombies didn't open doors.

"Your brother?" Steve turned to glance nervously down the hall.

She wanted to answer yes, because who else could it be? They hadn't seen any survivors, just monsters and zombies. It had to be Chris, but what if it wasn't? Alexia Ashford was still somewhere out there, "I don't know."

"Figures," he sighed, "Where are you supposed to meet your brother?"

They hadn't exactly discussed that, "There's a hanger somewhere, I'm pretty sure we can find him there if we don't run into him before we find it."

"Pretty sure?" it was hard to tell if Steve was angry or amused, "Where would you be without me?"

That was a question she wasn't going to give an honest answer to, because of the two possibilities he wouldn't like the first and she didn't want to think about the second. If Steve hadn't been there what would Alexia have done to her? She'd found Claire barely able to stand after being poisoned by the B.O.W. she'd fought on the roof, but she hadn't done anything to take advantage of her helpless state. Instead she'd coaxed a pair of the mutated insects that swarmed in some parts of the base to coat her in a sticky, rapidly drying slime and used it to attach her to the wall. Once she was thoroughly trapped Alexia had left her, though not before making the cryptic comment that she had other things to attend to and would return once she figured out something suitable for her.

If Steve hadn't been there would Alexia have returned before Chris found her and killed her, or worse? What if she'd done whatever she'd done to Steve to her instead? What would have happened when Chris found her and freed her? She was sure that her self-control would have been better than Steve's so it wasn't Chris she was worried about, or not his safety at least. The thing was she knew him well enough that she wasn't sure how he'd respond if she'd done something like Steve had. Chris wasn't the sort to hesitate, ever, and if he saw that she'd been infected and thought she'd lost control…

When they found him she was going to have to think quickly. If Steve opened a door and Chris was on the other side…

"Maybe I should take the lead now?"

"Don't worry, I've got this," Completely misunderstanding the reason she sounded so worried, Steve managed a weak version of one of his usual, overly confident laughs.

The hallway ended at two doors, one opened to a thoroughly ransacked lab. It looked as though someone had gone through it in a hurry and then taken great pains to destroy any evidence of what they'd been searching for. Several computers lay smashed on the floor, vials and petri dishes floated in an overflowing sink and the whole place smelled strongly of bleach. Papers still smoldered in a trashcan in one corner of the room, the fire threatening to spread as bits of hot ash floated out and fell on the torn notebooks scattered on the floor around it.

"Someone went through a lot of trouble to trash this place," Steve stated the obvious as he looked over unusually through destruction, "You think it was your brother?"

"No," she spoke answered immediately. Chris wasn't the sort to do something like what they were looking at, he'd never be so through, especially when the facility was already in a state of chaos. He wouldn't have taken the time to carefully destroy everything in the room. It might have been one of the researchers or workers, but no, the door had slammed moments ago and the fire in the trash was still burning. From what she'd encountered the place had been overrun by zombies for a very long time and it didn't make sense that anyone who survived this long would take the time to do something like that. It was a mystery and would likely remain so unless they met the person who'd done it.

"Toss me the keys," Steve interrupted her thinking, "This one's locked."

She did as he asked and watched as he fumbled and dropped the keys. Watching him pick them up she got a good look at how the last two fingers on his right hand remained stiffly in place, curling inwards toward his palm. His hands were shaking badly enough that getting the first key into the lock was a struggle for him.

It didn't work and when he tried the next one he dropped the keys again. Growling he bent down to pick them up, stopping half way there to rub at his left shoulder. For the first time Claire noticed that something was pressing against his shirt there. Immediately she thought of the insectile limbs the B.O.W. she'd fought on the roof had sprouted. It was a thought she wished she hadn't had, but once it occurred to her she couldn't get it out of her head.

One by one Steve went through the keys, struggling the whole while. It was maddening to watch and time and time again she was tempted to ask him to hand them over to her and let her take care of things, but there was no hurry. All the zombies near them were dead and she had no clue where Chris was.

Finally Steve threw the keys to the floor and punched the door hard enough to dent the metal, "It's no good. None of them work."

"What do we do?" She looked at him and then back down the hall from where they'd come from. Could they have missed something? Some secret passageway or a clue as to where the key they needed was.

"You check that room," he gestured at the open door to the ruined lab, "Whoever trashed it might have left something behind. I'll go back and see what I can find there."

He took off half running half staggering down the hall before she had a chance to say anything. The frantic look in his blood red eyes giving her a fairly good idea of what his real intent was, not that it mattered. She could go and get him once she found a way out.

Except there wasn't anything. Just ruined lab equipment and an open and empty safe. For the first time since the whole ordeal started she felt truly helpless. The keys were still there where Steve had dropped them and, even though she'd seen him go through them all, she picked them up and tried for herself. Maybe he'd missed one by accident, maybe he'd found the right one and turned it the wrong way, maybe his hands had been shaking too badly.

None of them worked.

Unable to help herself, she started crying.

"Claire? Is that you?"

Hearing Chris' voice on the other side of the door was the last thing she expected. Her first response was to ask her older brother who else he thought it could have been, but instead she took a deep breath, her tears of frustration changing to relief.

Chris must have realized how stupid his question was because he continued, "Did you find Steve? Is he with you?"

"No, he's…" and she started crying again, "Chris, Steve…he's…"

"Take it easy," Chris cut her off before she could even attempt to explain, "Can you unlock the door?"

Now she did want to scream at him. Did he think that she wouldn't have opened it already if she'd been able to?

"No, it's stuck," she tried turning the knob one last time for good measure, "Is there anything you can do from your side?"

As a last ditch effort she would mention that she'd seen a notice about the security system on one of the computers, how the base had a self-destruct system that would unlock all the doors if it was activated. The thing was, she didn't want to do that as anything other than a last resort in case the door was stuck thoroughly that it wouldn't open then either.

The door shook as Chris slammed into it, "It's stuck from here too. You want me to try and break it down?"

"Unless you have any other ideas," she stepped back from the door.

"Alright, here it goes!"

This time she saw the door move when Chris kicked it, the hinges actually twisting slightly from the force.

She'd expected that Steve would come running at all the noise, but he was nowhere to be seen, probably still with the zombies. That was good though, it would give her time to explain things, or think of a way to explain things

Another kick and she was able to see a gap between the door and its frame. Just to be safe she took another step back.

"Almost got it!"

First she was going to tell Chris that Steve was alive, then she'd have him wait while she went back to get Steve, that way things wouldn't be as bad.

The door was half way off its hinges. It flew open with the next kick and Chris stumbled into the hall.

"Let's get out of here," he hurried over to her and started patting her down, checking her for injuries before she had a chance to say anything, "There's a jet in the hanger. We can get out of here and if we make it to –"

"I need to go back for Steve," she cut him off.

Chris looked at her, his expression one of regretful understanding, "I'm sorry, but we can't. Carrying a body out of here isn't worth it and there's not room in the jet."

"He's alive," she glared at him, daring him to try and argue, "I'm going back to get him. You wait here and make sure nothing comes after us."

"He's alive?" Chris didn't seem able to believe what he was hearing, "But I thought you said he was dead."

"I didn't," she tried to keep the edge out of her voice, but it was hard. There were times when Chris heard what he wanted to and not what she was actually saying.

He grimaced and turned away, "Damn it, we're going to have to think of another way out of here then. There's not room in the jet for three people."

When Chris had said jet she assumed that he'd been exaggerating, but somehow it figured that he'd managed to fly to the rescue in what must have been an actual fighter jet of some sort. She didn't want to think about how he'd gotten it and didn't dare ask what model because it would probably only lead to more questions. Instead she stayed focused on what she knew, "There's an Australian research base only a few miles from here. There's probably some sort of transport vehicles somewhere around here. If we can find one Steve and I can get away that way and you can escape in your jet."

"Wait," Chris glanced suspiciously at her, "Is this because of how you said that you'd never get into any plane I was piloting?"

"No, mostly" she glared back at him, "Steve is alive and I'm not leaving him behind."

"Wait," Chris called after her, "Mostly?"

"Remember what happened to your first car?" she reminded him before she took off running down the hall. Yes, she was being petty there, but she was his little sister and it was her job to remind him of the stupid things he did from time to time.

She found Steve exactly where she expected to, gorging himself on the dead zombies. He didn't even look up when she arrived, giving her a chance to see how far the mutations had progressed. There was a distinct curve to his spine, giving him a hunched over appearance. His shit was pulled tight across his back and there were several new bumps along his left shoulder, the largest having pushed through his shirt to reveal a jagged bone spike. All over his arms the green patches had grown larger, fusing together until there was barely any place where she could see normal skin.

"Steve?"

He looked up at her, his mouth unable to fully close around his fangs. Eyes narrowing he let out a low growl. By the time she realized that he was looking at something behind her it was already too late, Chris had a hand on her shoulder and was pushing her behind him.

"Stay back Claire," Chris already had his gun drawn and was attempting to get between her and Steve, but she refused to let him.

"No!" she grabbed his arm, trying to prevent him from taking aim, "Don't shoot him!"

"Get off of her," Steve growled as he stood up, fumbling for his own pistol with fingers too stiff and twisted to properly grasp it.

That was probably the only thing that kept the situation from going from bad to worse, the fact that Steve was still human enough mentally to think of going for his gun rather than attacking with his claws and fangs. It gave Claire the time to manage the most terrifying and awkward introduction of her life.

"Chris! Calm down!" she shoved at her brother, trying to get him to stop trying to push her out of the way, "That's Steve!" Then she turned to Steve, who had managed to get his gun, but was having trouble working his finger past the trigger guard and onto the trigger, "And Steve, don't worry, this is my brother Chris. He's not going to hurt me."

"He looks like a real jerk," Steve snorted, but at least he stopped trying to maneuver his hands around the gun. Instead he simply glared at Chris.

Chris was far less willing to stand down, but by bringing her heel down as hard as she was able to on the toe of his boot she managed to get him to lower his gun.

"Let's focus on getting out of here," Claire interjected, before the situation could escalate again, "This place has a self-destruct system. We should activate it before we get out of here."

"Good idea, we don't want anything left for them to rebuild and start up whatever it was they were doing here," Chris stared at Steve as he said this, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, or so Claire hoped. It was equally likely that he was trying to figure out the most effective way to kill Steve, but as long as he wasn't actively trying she was willing to consider it a win. Then he continued, "Claire, I want you to get out of here. I can take care of it on my own."

She was about to protest, remind him that she was more than capable of taking care of herself, that she'd done fine so far, but then she thought about Steve. If he went with them it would be too easy for an 'accident' to happen or for him to get distracted. Like it or not, she'd stick with Chris' plan, "Alright, let's go."

"He goes first," Chris motioned at Steve, who was already moving forward, in the process bumping into Chris harder than could easily be attributed to an accidental stumble. Chris glared at him and Steve looked back, baring his teeth in a snarl.

As soon as they started walking turned to her, "I don't trust that –"

"I can hear you, you know," Steve snapped, and then added, "But I guess thinking wasn't required in whatever it is you do for a living."

At least he kept walking as he spoke, and Chris ignored his comment and kept talking to Claire, "How exactly did you find him again?"

"He was trapped and half conscious," Clair replied, grateful that Chris was understanding enough to start showing concern about what had happened, "I had to get him out."

"Why?" Chris sounded incredulous, "What were you thinking freeing a B.O.W.?"

"I didn't know he'd been infected at the time," Claire protested.

Chris' expression of disbelief intensified, "How?"

Steve burst out laughing, "You're kidding, right?"

When Chris didn't respond he stopped and turned back, looking him up and down, "You aren't, are you? You really think I was like this when I first found your sister?"

Claire hadn't realized that was what Chris had been asking about, how the two of them had met for the first time, which was probably a good thing since mentioning that Steve would have killed her if not for having terrible aim would have done nothing to improve the situation. The implications did make her stop and stare at her brother as well. Did Chris really think that she'd try and rescue a B.O.W.? Yes, when she was a small child she'd tried to take home every stray she found and rescue injured wild animals, but she'd outgrown that, mostly.

Chris started to say something, but thought better of it.

After that they continued though the compound in silence. With Chris' help they managed to find their way out of the main building. Thankfully they had no further run-ins with zombies. Outside the storm had cleared enough that they were able to see several outbuildings, one of which had several vehicles near it. Steve offered to run ahead and get one warmed up for them and Claire started to follow him, only for Chris to grab her by the wrist and pull her back.

"Once this is over we're going to need to talk," he said in his best 'over protective big brother' tone, "I'm going back in to make sure…never mind. Just get to that Australian base and keep safe. And don't do anything stupid."

"I was looking for you," she retorted, feeling defensive.

"And you found yourself a pet B.O.W.," he smiled wryly.

"He's not!" her protest fell flat because while Steve wasn't a pet, there was no denying the rest of Chris' statement. Instead she chose to focus on what was more important, "Whatever happened to him hasn't gotten bad and there might be a way to cure him."

"Yeah," Chris looked past her to where Steve had managed to get one of the vehicles started, "Just be careful and if things get bad you know how to defend yourself, don't hesitate."

"Goodbye and good luck to you too," she turned away from Chris, unable to believe how stubborn he was being. Whatever happened next, they were out of danger. She wasn't going to have to defend herself from anything, especially not Steve, which was what she was sure Chris was implying.

Trudging grimly forward and making a point of not looking back at her brother she went to where Steve was waiting. The truck, if it could even be called that, was bright orange and had treads instead of tires, which made sense she supposed. As far as she could tell it was used for hauling supplies and equipment to and from the different parts of the facility. Steve had was sitting awkwardly in the passenger seat, leaning forward because the changes to his back and shoulders prevented him from sitting properly. While waiting he'd clearly looked around inside the vehicle because he was wrapped in an emergency blanket and holding a compass.

She was about to ask him why he wasn't the one driving when she realized that he'd taken his boots off. She could see them sitting on the passenger side floor, holes visible by the toes. Between that and the way he was forced to sit she realized that he wouldn't have been able to drive.

He smiled weakly at her, "Talk to me."

"About what?" she got the truck in gear and started heading in the direction they'd gone during their first escape attempt. She still hadn't managed to figure out what she'd hit, or what had hit them, but with the weather having cleared she was sure that this time she'd be able to avoid it as long as she was careful.

"I don't know, anything" Steve was clearly thinking the same thing, because he was looking nervously out the windows, "Just distract me."

Family and how they'd ended up in their respective situations were topics that were obviously off limits, if only because they weren't safe yet, soon, but not yet. Pointless things seemed like the better option and from there they ended up talking about favorite television shows and movies, a subject on which they shared nothing in common. She liked comedies and Steve liked stupid action movies. Trying to find some common ground she changed the topic to guns and was horrified to discover that Steve possessed only the most rudimentary knowledge of firearms, basing everything on what looked cool in the movies he watched. Grasping at straws she asked him what his favorite gun was.

Steve frowned and stared out the window for a long while, lost in thought. Finally he turned to her with an embarrassed smile, "The one James Bond uses?"

He was asking as much as answering and now it was her turn to frown. She hadn't watched any of the movies, but she knew enough that she should have been at least able to remember what the famous fictional spy carried. She had it right on the tip of her tongue, something small, easy to carry and conceal, practical and fitting for the character. What was it?

"A Beretta 418?" she asked, knowing as soon as she'd said it that she was wrong, "No, that's not it, give me a minute, I'll remember."

"Don't worry about it," Steve looked between the compass and the vehicle's odometer, "We should be there soon enough anyway."

"No," Claire drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, "It's going to drive me crazy if I don't figure this out. I should know this, I caught a few minutes of one of the movies when it was playing on TV one day. I saw the gun you're talking about and it's distinctive enough that I should know."

"Really, don't worry," he started to laugh, but it turned into a groan of pain.

"What's wrong?" Claire swerved then slammed on the brakes, terrified of what might be happening.

Blood red eyes watering, Steve gave her an embarrassed smile, "I bit my tongue."

"Oh," looking away she focused on the emptiness in ahead of them, wondering when the Australian base would appear. The pupils of Steve's eyes were starting to change as well, narrowing to slits like those of a cat or lizard.

The little mishap managed to kill the conversation. Instead he started fiddling with the truck's radio, turning the dial back and forth, listening to the soft hiss of static.

"I don't expect to contact the station," Steve explained "But it's worth a try."

"Good idea," she checked the direction they were heading in and made a slight adjustment to their course. It would be a while before they reached the research station, "You like spy movies?"

"Just the James Bond ones," he shrugged and leaned forward a little further, "I read the books too, or as many of them as I could get."

"Oh," she hadn't realized that there were books about the character as well as movies. Even if she had known about them, she probably wouldn't have read them. She didn't really care for thrillers and her idea of a good book was an Agatha Christie mystery, "What other books do you like?"

"Pretty much anything by Louis L'Amour," Steve laughed, "Easily one of the best authors ever."

Claire was fairly sure she'd heard of him, "He wrote about cowboys and stuff like that, right?"

Steve looked crestfallen and, without thinking, leaned back against the seat. The moment his back hit the seat he winced and jerked forward, slamming his hand against the truck's dash and leaving deep gouges in the plastic where he'd dragged his claws across it.

There was no need for her to ask what had happened, one glance at Steve and the answer was obvious. Several more bone spikes had broken through the skin of his back, growing long enough to have punched holes in the blanket he had wrapped around himself.

Letting out a hiss of pain through clenched teeth he reached over his shoulder and ran his fingers along the jagged spurs of bone. He looked at her, red eyes pleading, "Is it as bad as it feels?"

"I've seen worse," Claire answered quickly. It was true too and it saved her from having to ask if he was talking about what was happening to his back or his hands. The thumb and first two fingers of his right hand had grown noticeably longer than the others, which were curled tightly against his palm.

The truck's radio let out a blast of static, sparing her from any further questions and giving Steve something to focus on.

He resumed fumbling with the dial and she tried not to stare at his hand as he did so.

Static faded in and out until finally –

"– someone tell me what the fuck is going on out there?"

The two of them looked at each other and smiled. The thickly accented voice on the radio, as distorted as it was by static, was the first sign that they were headed in the right direction. For the first time since fleeing the Umbrella base getting to safety felt like something that was actually going to happen.

It took Steve several more minutes of fiddling with the radio to figure out how to actually respond.

"I'm Steve Burnside and it's kind of a long story," he fidgeted uncomfortably, "How close are we to you guys?"

"How the bloody fuck am I supposed to know? You're the," a blast of static and then, "not know where you are?"

Steve's eyes narrowed and he let out an unmistakable growl.

"– can't hear you over the static, say that again?"

"We're trying to get to you," Claire said quickly, "We escaped the Umbrella base and –"

"Is this a joke?" static, "- sent a distress call on all frequencies," more static, "- a breech in the lab and everyone being dead." A particular long blast of static, "- later, saying that everything's going, and I quote, 'wonderful, exactly as planned'. And then you don't -" static again, this time lasting long enough that Claire worried they'd lost the signal.

"Are you still there?" Steve asked, then continued without waiting for an answer, "They were messing with the t-virus there. It must have gotten outs somehow, before we even got there. The whole place was overrun with zombies. The Ashfords, they were the ones running the whole show, were totally crazy. I don't know what they were doing, making monsters, but I don't know why."

As he went he started talking faster and faster, his tone becoming increasingly frantic even as his words became more and more garbled as he struggled to talk around his fangs.

"Calm down," Claire took a hand off of the wheel to give his shoulder a squeeze, trying to ignore how boney it felt beneath the blanket.

Steve let out a hissing sigh and put a hand on top of hers, his long fingers bending stiffly as he tried to squeeze her hand.

At that moment the voice on the radio returned, "I only got about half of that. Something about a virus?"

"Yes, the t-virus," Claire started before Steve got the chance, "Like what happened in Raccoon City."

Static, then, "You're serious, aren't you? You're not still -" static drowned out the next few words, "- of course not, that's why you were asking where you were. Which means you're heading towards us?"

"Yes, I hope," Claire laughed nervously.

"How many of you are there?" the man on the radio sounded as nervous as Claire felt.

"Just the two of us."

"Things were that bad?"

"Worse," Steve interjected.

"I don't want to know," the man on the radio said quickly, "But we'll be able to let the two of you stay until next week when we get supplies delivered. Do either of you need medical attention?"

The pair looked at each other.

"Yes." Claire said quickly.

At the same time Steve tried to speak over her, "No."

"What do you mean no?" Claire looked at him, incredulous.

Steve held out his hands to her, "Look at me! I can't let them see me like this. What am I supposed to do?"

"You weren't worried about this earlier," Claire reached out to take one of his hands in hers, but he pulled away.

"That's because I didn't think we were actually going to make it this far," he growled, "I wasn't planning that far ahead."

"Well we've made it," she tried to manage a reassuring smile, "And once we get back to civilization we can see about getting you taken care of."

"I told you not to treat me like I'm stupid," his red eyes narrowed, "I'm going to end up locked up in a lab for the rest of my life, part of some big science project."

"I'm not going to let that happen to you and if anyone tries," she brought her hand to the gun holstered at her hip.

Steve's eyes went wide, "Seriously? I thought you were crazy when we first met, but seriously?"

He actually leaned away from her, his expression becoming guarded.

There was a nervous sounding cough over the radio, effectively bringing an end to the conversation, "So…when you get here don't leave your vehicle. Someone's going to come out with some emergency supplies for you and then you can stay put until we figure out who's better equipped to handle this."

The radio went silent.

"What now?" Steve moaned, slamming his fist against the window. Cracks spider webbed out from the point of impact.

"We get there and then we wait," she forced herself to sound calm, "Once Chris gets there he'll help me straighten things out. He's good at this kind of stuff."

"Sure," Steve curled up in his seat and pulled the blanket over his head.

Claire drove on, staring into the empty whiteness ahead.

In the distance Claire could see a smudge on the horizon, it was hard for her to be sure if it was even there or not, much less how far away it was, but it looked like something and it was in the right direction according to the compass. The longer she drove the more confident she became that it was the Australian research station, even if it didn't seem to be getting that much closer. She knew that in open spaces distances could be deceiving and that it was hard to judge exactly how far away something was. Over time it was growing steadily larger, and that was what mattered. Next to her Steve was asleep, she could hear him snoring and she decided to let him rest. After all he'd been through he was probably exhausted and, given the way things were, it was probably best that he was asleep.

"Right then," the radio crackled to like without warning, startling both of them, "You still there?"

Steve let out a noise somewhere between a growl and a shout and threw the blanket off of him. He looked around, eyes wide and uncomprehending. Without meaning to Claire reached for her gun, a gesture that Steve failed to notice in his panic.

"Yes," Claire said slowly, not daring to take her eyes off of Steve.

She could tell he was trying to calm down, but at the same time, with the blanket off of him it was far too easy to see how far his changes had progressed. The green patches had spread until they covered him completely, and in several places his skin had thickened and taken on a scaly texture and there was something very animalistic to the way he was moving.

"That's good," the man on the radio didn't sound like he meant it in the least, "I've got good news. There's a Russian base a day or so away from here that we were able to get in touch with. They normally keep to themselves, but when they got news of what happened to you guys they were more than happy to help. As soon as you get here we'll be radioing them and they'll send someone to pick you up."

"That's…good," Claire said slowly, staring at Steve's hands, which he was clenching and unclenching on the blanket. The last two fingers of his right hand were more or less gone and the remaining ones were twice as long as they had been, though not much larger. His left hand was in slightly better shape, though the fingers there had thickened and become considerably less mobile. Also worth noting was the way he was tearing the blanket to shreds without seeming to be fully aware of what he was doing.

"Hey, Steve?" she whispered, afraid of what might happen once she drew his attention to her.

Slit pupils widened as he stared at her. He growled something unintelligible, then coughed and tried again, "Whaa?"

She did her best to ignore the way he'd struggled to manage even that single word "Did you hear what he said?"

He nodded slowly, "Nah good."

"What?"

It took a moment for Claire to realize the series of harsh growls were his attempts at clearing his throat. Afterwards he seemed to have a slightly easier time with the words, "Since when were the Russians the good guys?"

"What's the worst that could happen?"

Steve looked at her like she was crazy.

Realizing that there was a very long list of possible answers to her rhetorical question Claire started to try and explain herself, only to remember something very important from their earlier conversation, "It's a Walther PPK."

He looked at her uncomprehending.

"The type of gun James Bond uses," she smiled at him, "I can't believe I couldn't remember that."

"You're crazy," Steve laughed and looked out at the base ahead, "But I guess we made it."

Despite his overall pessimism about their situation he sounded relieved.

"We did," Claire stared at the cluster of buildings, trying to figure out where she should go. The largest one in the middle seemed like a safe bet.

"Yeah," he was staring fixedly forward, totally focused on the base, "When they said emergency supplies, do you think they meant food?"

Then he licked his lips, mottled purple tongue sliding between his fangs.

As they got closer a figure bundled up against the cold, emerged from one of the smaller buildings and waved them over to the side of the second largest building. Claire stopped the truck and started to open the door, "You have no idea how glad I am to get here."

"Just stay there," the woman shouted, her voice being the only thing that revealed her gender, even her face was covered to protect her from the wind, "We'll bring food and blankets to you. Keep in the truck and don't wander off. You might get lost if the storm picks up again."

Claire closed the door and the woman ran inside.

Steve stared intently at the door she had gone in through.

Several minutes later a pair of figures emerged, carrying a box between them. At the sight of it Steve looked ready to jump through the windshield.

"Please don't get out," the same woman who had directed them in spoke as she and her companion put the box down several meters from the truck, "Wait until we get back inside. We don't want…"

She was staring at Steve as she spoke, not that Steve seemed to notice, all his focus was on the box. He let out a low growl and started fumbling with the door latch. His fingers, twisted and tipped with claws, couldn't get a grip on the latch and he continued to fumble with the door until the woman and her companion were out of sight.

"Don't worry," Claire said quietly as she opened the door on her side, "I'll get it, you just stay in here."

As soon as the door opened Steve lunged forward and pushed past her, scrambling out across the snow towards the box of supplies.

Claire hurried after him, stopping to gather the blankets and bottles of water that he had tossed aside in his hurry to get to the food. There wasn't much to begin with, several granola bars, some dried fruit and a few bags of mixed nuts. Steve ate it all, then rummaged around through the wrappers looking for more.

"Steve, let's –"

He turned to look at her, eyes unfocused as though he wasn't really seeing her.

"Steve?" Again her hand went to her gun. Was this how it was going to end?

Snarling he swatted the empty box aside and stood up. He was shaking badly as he staggered towards her, "Claire?"

"Let's get back to the truck, okay?" she didn't take her hand away from the gun as she waited for him to make his next move.

"S-sounds like a p-plan," he managed through chattering teeth.

Relaxing slightly she wrapped one of the blankets around him and guided him back into the truck.

Once safely out of the cold she helped him get situated before wrapping herself in one of the blankets the people from the station had given them and opening a bottle of water.

Next to her Steve fidgeted uncomfortably, watching every move she made.

"Is there something wrong?"

As soon as the words left her mouth she could have kicked herself for saying them. Asking what wasn't wrong was probably easier.

Ignoring the question, Steve gestured at the bottle of water with the three long claws of his left hand, "Can I have some?"

"Sure," reaching down to the floor of the truck, were she'd put the rest of the water bottles, she grabbed one and passed it to him.

His took it and after several minutes of trying with both his left and right hand, he passed it back to her with a sheepish expression, "I can't open it. I think my hands are still numb from the cold."

Sure, it was the cold, not the fact that he'd lost at least one finger on both of his hands as the virus transformed him into…something. She took the bottle from him and opened it before passing it back to him. He still managed to spill most of it.

It was going to be a long wait until the Russians got there, if they came. Hopefully Chris would be coming soon, except, if he did arrive, what could he do? The plane he'd come in didn't have enough room for all three of them and she was sure that he'd try and get her to leave Steve behind. He'd reassure her that Steve would be in good hands and then take her away to safety or whatever passed for safety given the situation. What would happen if she stayed with Steve just a bit longer to make sure that he really was in good hands? She honestly didn't know anything about Russia's policy on bioweapons research, and Steve's opinion was heavily colored by the silly spy movies he liked so much. Maybe she was worrying too much and everything would turn out fine in the end. It was just that the way things had gone for her she seriously doubted that she would be so lucky.

"Are you alright?" Steve asked as he continued to adjust the blanket she'd given him. By the looks of it he'd wadded up the blanket he'd shredded earlier and put it behind his back to help him get comfortable, not that it seemed to be helping much.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said quickly.

Steve frowned, or at least she thought it was a frown, it was hard to tell with his fangs, "You're cold."

"No I'm not," she lied.

"You're shaking."

He reached out and put a hand on her arm, just below where her sleeve ended. His skin was dry and rough against hers, but it was also feverishly warm, or maybe it just felt that way because of how cold she was.

"Okay, maybe I am," she attempted to brush it off as unimportant. The truth was she wasn't just cold, she was tired and hungry, but she wasn't about to bring any of that up, especially not the last one. It would only serve to make Steve feel guilty about not sharing with her, or get him thinking about food again. Given the situation she wasn't sure which would be worse, "It's not like there's anything we can do until help arrives."

He smiled at her and partially unwrapped the blanket around him, "That's not true. We can keep each other warm."

She was tempted to try and argue, but his desperately hopeful expression made it impossible. It wasn't like keeping those extra few inches between the two of them would help if something happened and she was cold.

Several awkward minutes of squirming and jabbing with elbows and knees followed before the two of them were able to get, if not comfortable, as close as was possible given the situation. She was on Steve's lap and he had his arms around her, holding her tight against him in a position where he could rest his head on her shoulder. He'd grown taller and his arms were disproportionately long, making his hold on her awkward, but she had to admit that she was much warmer this way, even if she could feel how painfully thin he'd gotten. It made sense, in a way, his body was tearing itself apart as it changed, his metabolism going into overdrive in an attempt to fuel those changes. The process was obviously painful, but he suffered in relative silence. Despite him not complaining she could hear his joints creaking and feel his muscles twitching as the transformation continued. When was it going to stop?

Was it even going to stop at all or would the strain of the changes kill him, was probably a better question. It wasn't likely given some of the things she'd seen back in Raccoon City, though in that case it death might be preferable. Would her helping him only make things worse in the long run? Should she have left him behind as he'd insisted, or killed him when she first realized he was infected? It would have been a mercy killing.

It wasn't too late for that.

She could shoot him, no one would even question what had happened, not with the condition he was in.

"Claire?" Steve moved, attempting to get more comfortable.

His efforts pressed her back against his chest so that she could feel his ribs through his shirt. His body really was eating itself alive for her to feel his ribs so clearly, but there was more to it, on his right side they seemed to be pulling away, shifting under his skin. Swallowing down nausea she responded to his one word question with one of her own, "Yeah?"

"What are you thinking about?" He was leaning his head on her shoulder, his breath hot against the side of her face.

Sighing, she pulled the blanket more tightly around her, "Nothing."

"Oh," he sounded disappointed, "I was thinking…"

He trailed off and worked his hand free of the blankets to run his claws along the side of her face.

Closing her eyes Claire tried to ignore the way his fingers felt, how there were places where his skin had hardened into patches of rough scales. For a time he seemed content to stroke the side of her face, something that might have been comforting if not for everything else, then he slid his hand across her face so that his palm was against her cheek. His fingers, the ones that remained, were long enough that he was able to curl them around the back of her head.

This was it, she was dead. Any move she made would result in him tightening his grip and twisting. How deep would his claws manage to sink in before he snapped her neck?

Steve leaned in, fangs brushed against the side of her face.

Shit! He was going to bite her. How fast would she bleed to death if he got her in the throat? What if he didn't get anything vital with the first bite? She'd watched helpless as people got mauled by zombies, they'd been screaming even as the zombies started to eat. Was the same thing going to happen to her?

He let go and pulled away, his breathing harsh and frantic.

"I'm sorry," he panted.

She wanted to scream, but that would have been a mistake when he was so obviously struggling to stay in control. It was all for nothing and as soon as she got the chance she was going to have to kill him. After all they'd been through it was going to end like this.

Steve continued, "I just wanted to kiss you, because depending on what happens once we're rescued who knows if I'd get another chance. I screwed up, didn't I?"

The scream she'd been holding back escaped as a soft, horrified moan and before she could say anything to explain herself she started crying.

Instead of pushing her away or telling her to pull herself together and stay focused, Steve held her awkwardly against his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, quick and fluttering like he was dying. It gave her something to focus on other than the sound of her own sobbing. Pressed against him she listened to his heart, willing it to keep going because it was easier to think that the biggest danger was him dying before help came.

It worked too, in that she was somehow able to fall asleep.

She awoke to a confusion of light and sound and above it all a low, rumbling that it took her a moment to place as Steve growling.

Somehow she must have worked her way under the blankets while she slept and the sun reflecting off the snow blinded her. Squinting into the glare she could see silhouettes and a flurry of activity.

Steve's grip tightened, holding her protectively against his chest.

"What's going on?" fighting panic she struggled to escape from the blankets entangling her.

The growling grew louder.

"Is it Umbrella?" Because of the way she'd been sleeping her right arm had fallen asleep and she found herself unable to draw her gun. She'd have to rely on Steve to hold them off until she could manage.

More growling, but she could feel him shaking his head.

"The Russians?" had Steve been right about them being the bad guys? It sort of made sense since as far as she knew Umbrella didn't have a Russian branch and Russia had no bioweapons program to speak of beyond whatever was left over after the Cold War ended. Knowing that Steve was infected they probably wanted to use him to start making their own B.O.W.s.

This time she got an actual response, though it was little more than a growl, "Worse."

At least he was still able to talk, albeit barely. She could see well enough to realize that the reason she couldn't make out more than light and shadows outside was because the glass of the window was covered in frost. Steve had cleared a spot, but he had his face pressed against the glass and she couldn't see past him, "Who's there?"

His answer was little more than a sharp, angry hiss.

It was like they were playing a game of twenty questions, what was worse than the Russians that wasn't Umbrella Corp?

There were voices outside, yelling. Straining to hear over Steve's growling she could pick up bits of what sounded like an argument.

"- clearly infected with whatever killed the rest of them and we're running a closed system here!"

"She wasn't! At least not when I last saw her, if anything's happened –"

It was Chris!

Pushing past Steve she opened the door and was hit by a blast of freezing air, "I'm fine! We're both okay!"

Chris turned and went seamlessly from yelling at the men and women who'd come out to see what was going on to yelling at her, "Get out of there now!"

"Give me a minute, okay?" she continued to struggle against the blankets, which was made more difficult by the way Steve refused to let go of her.

"Now!" Chris stomped over, looking considerably worse for wear.

"What happened?" she tried to stall as she finally freed herself from the blankets only to have Steve wrap his arms around her.

"We can talk about that later, right now let's get going," he was glaring at Steve as he spoke, watching the same way he would any obvious threat.

"Can we at least wait until Steve's safe?" breaking free of his grip she stumbled out of the truck.

Steve reached for her, his claws catching the back of her vest as he pulled her up so she didn't fall face first into the snow.

"He's safe," Chris said flatly, "It's you I'm worried about."

"I can take care of myself," she snapped as she tried to take a step forward, nearly falling again when Steve continued to hold onto her, "Steve, you can let go."

"I can't, I'm stuck," he laughed nervously, wiggling his fingers and further tearing her vest.

Chris came forward, grabbing her roughly by the shoulders. For a moment she was at the center of a tug-of-war between the two of them, then her vest tore and Chris had her.

"See, I'm fine," she pushed away from her brother, but he refused to let go, "We can wait for the guys from the Russian research station to come get Steve and while we wait you can tell me what you were doing while I was looking for you."

Chris' grip tightened, "Steve can wait here and you can tell me what you were doing while we fly out of here."

"I was looking for you," she struggled free herself, "Let go of me."

Behind her Steve growled.

"Both of you calm down!" Behind Chris she could see the researchers running back inside and when she turned around she was able to see Steve standing barefoot in the snow.

He shuffled his feel uncomfortably, scraping gouges in the ice.

The changes had continued while she'd been asleep. The back of his jacket had been shredded by the spines growing out of his left shoulder and, if not for his hunched posture, he would have been taller than Chris. He growled and bared his teeth, something that would have been a great deal more terrifying if not for the fact he was leaning heavily against the door of the truck. Claire couldn't tell if it was because of how slippery the ground was or his trouble balancing stemmed from the fact that his feet had changed so that he was standing on his toes, which had grown and splayed out into three wickedly sharp looking talons.

"Claire," Chris sounded genuinely distressed, "I didn't want you putting yourself in danger for my sake."

"Then you should have told me where you were going and what you were doing," she protested, still struggling to get away.

"She's got a point," Steve laughed, taking a cautious step forward.

"Then you would have followed me," Chris ignored Steve's comment, instead focusing on Claire, "Instead of keeping your head down and staying out of trouble like I told you to."

"I tried," she finally managed to squirm free by doing as she had done last time and stomping down on her brother's foot.

"I'd hate to see what would have happened if you hadn't been trying," Chris scolded in his typical condescending older brother fashion.

"What's that supposed to mean?" So Chris didn't grab her again she took a step back. This also let her put a hand on Steve's arm, which would hopefully work to prevent either of them from doing anything stupid.

"Umbrella did its best to cover up what happened at its Paris branch, but," he shook his head, "Claire, what the hell were you thinking?"

"I'd gotten word that you might have been captured and were being held there," she winced at the memory of what had happened that night.

"It never occurred to you that it might have been a trap?" Chris shook his head in disbelief, "Because it was a trap!"

Before she could try and argue Steve let out a snort, "Wait, the guards were talking about that before everything went to hell. You did all that?"

"Yes," she wasn't sure if she should be proud of the damage she'd managed to do to Umbrella or embarrassed that she got caught in the process.

"I was wondering how…" Steve shrugged away from her and sat down in the truck, "You were serious earlier, about killing anyone who tried to hurt me."

She didn't like the way he was looking at her, somewhere between awe and fear.

"Claire," Chris' tone took on a warning note.

She ignored him, instead reaching out for Steve. He let her put a hand on his shoulder, between the protruding spikes. Instead of looking her in the eye he stared at her hand.

"This stuff is real to you, huh?" he moved his hand as though he was going to put it on top of hers, but instead just held it there, as though he couldn't figure out how to fit it between the spikes.

"I have no clue what you're talking about," she answered honestly, the whole situation leaving her off balance.

"I mean it's easy for you," he looked at her sheepishly, then continued, "Back when we found my dad I thought that maybe it was because he was a zombie, but you've killed people too."

"They worked for Umbrella," she said quickly. A few feet away Chris nodded in agreement.

"So did my dad," Steve hissed through clenched teeth, "And in case you didn't notice, your brother seems pretty willing to shoot me."

"Only if you give me reason to," Chris commented before Claire could even attempt to say anything.

Steve smiled bitterly, "I...I don't think I could do that. Zombies are one thing, but I don't think I could ever hurt, you know, a real person."

"You nearly shot me the first time we met," Claire teased, then, before Chris could get the wrong idea, she turned to him, "It was an easy enough mistake to make given the situation."

Her brother remained silent, leaving Claire thankful for small miracles.

"I know, but I thought you were a zombie," he slumped forward, staring at his feet, "What would happen if I went with you two? Other than your brother shooting me in the back the first chance he got."

"I wouldn't let him," Claire reassured, "We'd probably just be on the run until things quieted down."

"I'd keep you safe," Steve said softly.

Chris laughed.

"Yes, you'll keep me safe," she ignored her brother's outburst and gave Steve and extremely awkward hug.

He continued to stare at his feet, "Umbrella is still after the two of you?"

"Yeah," Chris said angrily, "But we're working on that. We're going after them too."

"So I might need to hurt someone, not monsters, but people," Steve gently pushed Claire's arms away, "I can't do that."

He licked his lips nervously, looking back and forth between Claire and her brother.

"That's fine," Claire reassured, "Not everyone can."

She was about to launch into one of Chis' lectures about how there were different kinds of people in the world, the same one he'd given her so many times when she was little, about how some people had to be ready to hurt others to keep the ones they loved safe.

"You don't get it," Steve inched away from her, "I don't think I can trust myself. If I start I might not be able to stop. And besides, we don't know how bad this is going to get."

He didn't know how bad it could get, she did. Images of William Birkin's last moments rose unbidden to her mind and she chose to instead focus on the rest of what Steve had said, "I trust you."

"That's not going to cut it," he laughed bitterly, "If I have to kill someone it'd probably end up the same way it did with the zombies. And maybe that's something you could deal with, but I couldn't, okay?"

"You'd be able to," she started, and then realized that was probably the wrong thing to say, "I'd stop you from going that far."

"For how long?" he was looking back and forth between her and Chris, "Because yeah, you were able to guilt me into following you here, but let's be serious, what could you actually do?"

"If I was there I'd shoot you," Chris answered for her, tactful as always, "Otherwise she'd have to do it herself."

"Chris, you're not helping," Claire had a hard time getting the words out because she felt like she was about to start crying again. It figured that Steve would have been thinking things over while she slept instead of waking her up so she could discuss them with her.

"Yeah," Steve went back to avoiding eye contact, "I think you could do something like that. I couldn't, or maybe I couldn't before and now I can. Honestly, that scares the hell out of me."

She wanted to reassure him, but everything she could think of to say was a lie.

He kept talking, "Everything's different now and I don't know how to explain it. I guess I don't want to hurt you in the same way you don't want to have to kill me. It might still happen because I sure as hell wasn't able to handle myself with those zombies. So let's save each other a lot of grief, okay?"

He smiled at her, the tough guy act resuming as best as he was able given the situation.

She was shaking and it wasn't just cold, "Okay, just –"

"I'll be fine," he shrugged dismissively as he fumbled with the truck door, "You go with your brother, I shouldn't have too much longer to wait for my ride out of here. I mean if you really did all that stuff in Paris then it's probably best that you go into hiding for a while. I mean I'd be doing a really crappy job of keeping you safe if you stick with me and end up getting arrested and hauled off again. I won't be around to save you next time."

"Yeah, save me," she grabbed the door before he could shut it, "Steve?"

He looked at her puzzled, recoiling as she leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before she could think better of it.

"Because I don't know how long it's going to be before I get another chance," it was hard for her to tell, but it looked like he was blushing, "But there will be another chance."

Adding to the indignity of it all she had to close the door for him. She lingered a moment, just in case there was something more he wanted to say, but he had already wrapped the blankets around himself and was laying sprawled face down across the seats.

Shaking from more than just the cold she made her way to the jet where Chris was waiting. She allowed him to help her up and make sure that she was safely situated.

From the truck Steve let out a sound half way between a scream and a roar.

Chris looked at her like he was about to say something patronizing.

She closed her eyes and looked away, "I hate you so much right now and I don't want to talk to you."

He understood and climbed into the pilot seat. Later he'd apologize and maybe she'd forgive him. For now she was content to stare out at the truck where Steve waited for whatever was going to happen to him.

The jet's engines roared to life and they rose into the air, the truck and then the base vanishing into the distance far faster than she would have liked. One way or another she was going to get Steve back and if Chris didn't like it he was just going to have to deal with it, just like she'd dealt with every rash decision that he'd ever made.


	9. Someone posted this on a forum, is it

**Summary:** The internet is full of _interesting_ things if you know what you're looking for. There are whole websites dedicated to the most unimaginable things and people willing to provide them with content.

 **Characters:** Original Characters

 **Notes:** Commando64 co-wrote this one, he set up the premise and most of the dialogue, I just put things together. It's based on a conversation the two of us had. I drew inspiration from 'creepy pasta' style stories and stuff I've encountered on different forums.

o0o

The video is not all that difficult to find if one knows the correct places to look. There exist certain sites that archive collections of such films. If one has the necessary files installed and the correct programs running all it takes is a few clicks. Anyone can watch it and others like it if they know the right terms to search. The video itself isn't terribly threatening in terms of content, it's the implications that are more ominous, reflecting the ever changing face of the threat of bioterrorism and the challenges faced by those who dedicate their lives to stopping it.

It starts with dimly lit room, possibly a storage room in the basement of a university or similar building if the shelves and boxes in the background are anything to go by. The edge of the table on which the camera filming it all sits is just visible along the bottom of the shot. Movement can be heard in the background, then a male voice speaks from off camera.

"And...alright, we're recording. You sure you wanna do this?"

A young woman dressed in a plain white t-shirt and gray sweatpants walks into view, "I've gone this far, I've kind of got to, you know?"

She holds up a white Styrofoam box, the labeling on it all carefully blacked out. Her hands are shaking and in the dim light of the room she looks pale and tired, as though she hasn't slept well for a very long while, "Time for the unboxing!"

Grinning she holds out her hand towards the camera. The man on the other side passes her a pocket knife. Fumbling to unfold the blade with one hand she keeps the box clutched protectively to her chest with the other. It takes her several attempts and while she's working the unseen cameraman speaks.

"It's just…" there's a long pause during which she finally manages to get the knife open, "Don't you remember what we saw on the news two years ago? There's a reason the BSAA hasn't released any information on this thing to the public, even if the UN's relaxing the laws when it comes to this particular one and…"

Looking past the camera she stares at whoever it is behind it, giving them a look that, if not directly threatening, makes it clear that they're treading on dangerous ground with their line of questioning, "I'm not the first person to do something like this. How do you think I managed to get it in the first place?"

The cameraman immediately changes the subject, "How much did you pay for it, anyway?"

As he asks this she gets the box open and tilts it so that a layer of bubble wrap is visible. She holds the box closer to the camera as she speaks, though so far there's no indication of what the contents are, "You don't want to know how much I paid for this. All I can say is a spent a lot of time working off the books the past year and change."

She smiles and laughs nervously, as though she's trying to prepare herself for whatever is coming next. Continuing to hold the box up to the camera she begins working her way through the mass of bubble wrap and tape inside, "It's gonna be worth it. This is legit. It's for real."

For the first time there's a hint of confidence in her voice.

At this point the box is nearly empty, all that remains is a small object wrapped in brown paper. She takes the object out and lets the box fall to the floor, her eyes wide as she holds it up to the camera. The cameraman steps forward, visible for the first time, though it's just an arm and part of his back blocking the shot.

"Well, at least they put safety first. What is this, just one dose?" There's a hint of irony in the way he says 'safety', but it's far overshadowed by his relief at there being 'just one dose', "I really, really hope you've got the guts to be really up for this."

"Yup, just one."

He steps back and the girl is holding up a syringe of red liquid, rotating it in front of the camera. The glass cylinder is covered in the remains of warning labels, most of them peeled away and scrubbed clean to the point of illegibility. A new label had been placed on the tube, the Cyrillic lettering translating to little more than the volume of the substance contained within, a date, and what might be a batch number. The girl taps a finger against the one universally understandable part of the label, a biohazard symbol, her breathing becoming rapid, either from fear or excitement.

The cameraman shifts nervously, his shoes scraping against the concrete floor, "I know what the news said about the infected, but don't eat me, alright?"

The girl rolls her eyes at his comment, a clear reference to how, during the outbreaks in Europe and China, there were relatively few instances of the individuals infected with the C-virus eating any of the people they killed.

When she continues to hold the syringe containing the C-virus, if it even is the C-virus, in front of the camera, the man speaks up yet again, coaxing her on despite his earlier trepidation, "Ready to take the plunge?"

"This is so stupid, but I hate needles. I'm actually shaking," she smiles at the camera as she struggles to prep the needle. Pausing in her efforts she holds her hands up close to the camera, everything going blurry until its autofocus manages to compensate. Her hands are indeed shaking, badly. The possibility of her dropping the syringe seems very likely, but she manages not to.

"Do you actually know what's going to happen?" again the cameraman's apprehension shows.

"No," her voice comes out a nervous squeak, as though what she's about to do has finally sunk in, "I mean I know what's supposed to happen and have a pretty good idea of what should happen, but it's kind of random, you know? I mean everyone's seen the photos and videos and stuff, that's the sort of thing that's going to happen."

She shrugs and falls silent, eyes darting back and forth from the camera to the needle as though willing the cameraman to say something to encourage her, or perhaps remind her of how dangerous what she plans on doing is. When he says nothing she closes her eyes and jabs the needle into her arm and pushes down on the plunger. Her already pale complexion goes nearly gray as she drops the needle and staggers backwards looking like she's about to faint, "Okay, done. No turning back now. Any second now…"

Her voice is little more than a whisper as she continues to back up until she bumps into the row of shelves behind her. Opening her eyes she grabs onto the shelf to help hold herself up, even managing a thumbs up and a sickly smile for the camera.

Nothing happens during the next thirty seconds and the cameraman once again steps forward, blocking the view.

"So…you're getting a little bit sweaty there. You holding up? Should I stand back a little or-Oh Jesus!"

He jumps back, nearly knocking the table over when she lets out a shrill cry of pain.

She's leaning forward, arms wrapped around herself, teeth clenched in pain.

"I'm…it's…," she hisses, "This is...supposed to happen, but I wasn't…"

Steam begins to rise from her body. She stretches out an arm to watch as wisps of vapor drift up from it. The effects are unmistakable, what she injected herself with was clearly the C-virus and, more importantly, she and the cameraman both knew it, still the cameraman seems unable to grasp what has happened and what will follow.

"A-are you okay? Is this supposed to be how it's supposed to go? Should I go fetch some help or," his moment of doubt is far too late, "M-Mother-"

The flare-up happens just as she's about to say something more, her words cutting off in a frantic scream as flames rise up and just as quickly sputter out. Thick slime flows across her body, her movements becoming sluggish as it hardens. Out of sight of the camera there's a muffled thud, likely the cameraman falling over.

The girl turns her head and reaches out, but it's too late, the slime has already begun to form a sort of cocoon over her body.

Several seconds pass during which the cameraman gets up and adjusts the camera, panning it to get a full view of the cocoon before setting it back down on the table.

"Tracy?" the cameraman whispers, his voice wavering, "Is that you? Can you...hear me?"

He steps into view, moving towards the girl while taking great care to avoid stepping in any of the slime that has pooled on the floor around her. Reaching out to her with a shaking hand, he runs a finger along her arm, "Hello? Can you hear me?"

There's no response from the cocoon.

He carefully traces the lines of her face, her features twisted in an expression of surprise and pain.

For the first time he faces the camera, "So, uh…"

He trails off, swallowing several times before continuing in a shaking voice, "Unless you can't see, my friend here has, uh, turned into some sort of...slime statue, or cocoon, or something, and," again he stops, this time to nervously run a hand through his hair, "Alright, just hang in there, alright? I don't know what really happened, but I'm gonna stick here, and just wait…goddammit, you should have told me beforehand exactly what would happen…"

The camera man looks at the camera again after saying this, then steps towards it and disappears from view.

It's a strange statement given the situation, possibly an attempt at pleading innocence through ignorance since what the two of them have done is against so many international laws that how they were able to accomplish it in the first place is a mystery. But they managed, the implications of that possibly far more dire than the fact that they were able to do it in the first place.

And the video of the two of them is just one on an ever increasing number. Some of the others are worse, having far better production value or a clearly unwilling subject, but they all end in a similar manner.

The cameraman comes back into view, leaning in to look into the camera's lens, "So uh, it's been one minute, twenty seconds since she…uh, caught fire and turned into this. My programming courses have really not taught me a thing about spontaneous human combustion!"

He starts pacing back and forth, blocking the shot once again, making it difficult to tell if there's movement from the cocoon or if it's the table shaking. The faint crackling, like ice dropped in warm water might be nothing more than an audio distortion.

"I really hope this video doesn't wind up in the BSAA and…just, Jesus Christ, I hope you're fine."

He looks back at the cocoon, jumping back and nearly knocking the camera off the table when, with a crack like glass breaking, the cocoon splits. For several seconds the camera shakes wildly as he struggles to get it back into place. During this time slime seeps from the split cocoon and something begins to emerge. Insectile limbs scrabble against the sides of the shell as it struggles to free itself. Moaning it pushes away and falls to the floor behind the crumbling shell. It's difficult to be sure with the strands of slime and bits of cocoon still clinging to its slick, gray skin, but it appears to be relatively human in appearance. The only visibly inhuman features it possesses are the twin rows of multi-jointed, clawed limbs running down its back. The limbs themselves are mismatched, some ending in scythe like blades, others tipped with bristles and claws.

"Is that you?" the cameraman asks in a hushed voice. The camera pans slightly, revealing that he's still holding on to it, making adjustments to better focus on the woman.

Slowly she rises to her feet, slime dripping down her naked body as she stretches. Seemingly unaware of the cameraman she examines herself, smiling as she flexes her new limbs, testing them and watching the way they move.

This goes on for several minutes during which the camera pans up and down her body, lingering on certain aspects of her body depending on the way she's facing. Most of the attention goes to her new appendages, as well as her arms which are covered in patches of glossy brown armor, growing denser towards her hands. The way she's moving makes it difficult to make out any details about her hands, but it's clear that they've changed a great deal. Certain unchanged parts of her anatomy get more than their fair share of attention as well, possibly one of the reasons why the video is one of the most popular of its kind. Several still frames taken from this segment of the video are commonly found on the image boards.

Eventually she stops her examination, and for the first time since emerging, faces the camera, pale eyes wide and seemingly unseeing. Her face is largely unchanged, though there's something subtly wrong with it, her mouth goes back too far and the muscles and bones of her jaw have shifted to accommodate the change. She hisses softly, her eyes narrowing as she stares past the camera at the cameraman. Without warning she darts forward, her mouth opening wider than humanly possible to reveal jagged, amber colored fangs.

She stops abruptly, grabbing on to the edge of the table that the cameraman is standing behind. Her mouth yawns open and she coughs, her whole body shaking from the effort. This continues for several seconds, during which she raises one of her hands and holds up a single finger in an unmistakable gesture of 'wait a moment'. During this time the cameraman goes back to filming, paying special attention to her right arm, the one she is holding up. It's easily the most dramatically changed part of her, even more so than her face, having split down the center up to her elbow. The smaller segment ends in a single blade like claw, the other possessing two claws and a distinct, though largely vestigial, thumb.

At this point she notes what the cameraman is doing and lifts her left hand, which is largely unchanged despite the patches of armor along the back of it and the claws tipping her fingers, to point at her back. Her face twitches into a smile as she turns her back to the camera. Down the center of her back there are ridges and knobs of armor, providing anchoring points for the muscles of her assortment of new limbs. Most are small and poorly formed, representing an assortment of claws, blades and pincers, as well as delicate, membranous wings too small to provide lift. Three of the limbs stand out as being large enough to use as weapons, though she doesn't seem to have any more control over them than any of the others. The pair of scorpions-like pincers half way down her back and the blade tipped limb near her left shoulder move in the same erratic manner as the rest of the new appendages.

The cameraman clears his throat, "So, I know that you said before to ask you the questions for the video, but first, I need to confirm this. Are you still, well, you? Can you say something or give me some sort of signal?"

She turns slightly and nods, still holding up her right arm as she rubs at her throat with her left hand. Along her back her new limbs twitch.

When she finally speaks her voice is hoarse her words halting, "Wow that's weird...Umm, right. Am I still me? Yeah…I feel pretty…it's not what I expected, but it's not bad."

Stopping she smiles at the camera, showing off her fangs, "I guess I'm me. I don't know, ask me a question and…yeah. Am I still me? That's kind of philosophical, isn't it?"

She laughs, a disconcerting, oddly resonant sound, and shakes her head.

The cameraman zooms in on her face, prompting her to open her mouth as wide as she can.

"Right so…what's your name? Your birth date? Do you remember who I am? Why you decided to do this?" the cameraman adjusts the focus and pans over to the remains of the cocoon, "And what was it like in there?"

Too softly to be heard without turning up the volume he adds a nearly unintelligible comment about one of them, likely her, needing a bath later.

She doesn't hear, instead she answers his questions, as though reading from a script, "My name's Tracy Bramoff, I was born March fifteenth 1987, you're Ian 'I can't think of a last name'."

Ian likely isn't the cameraman's name. Investigation quickly determined that the woman's name wasn't Tracy Bramoff, nor does anyone with that last name even know who she is. That hasn't stopped people from contacting individuals sharing the name, either to threaten them or to ask where 'Tracy' is.

In the video 'Tracy' strikes a pose, stretching the most developed of her new limbs around herself as best as she is able to give the camera a better view of them. It seems that she's gaining better control of them as time passes, "Why I did this…that's complicated. I guess because I wanted to I mean, who wouldn't if given the chance? Most people I know, but most people wouldn't understand…I guess anyone who ends up watching this will understand. What was it like… that's kind of tough, I remember it hurting a lot, then nothing, like I was asleep, but it couldn't have been for long. I kind of panicked when I woke up and couldn't move, but I made it out okay."

She turns around in front of the camera to show off her back and new limbs again.

"Well then, I guess it really is still you, even if your laugh is kinda creepy," 'Ian' steps into view again, this time to move around a few boxes in the corner of the room to reveal large mirror, "Say hi to the new you! How's it feel?"

'Tracy' catches sight of herself and gasps. Immediately she leans in and examines her face, then runs her fingers through her slime matted hair, which, aside from the slime, is the same as it was before her transformation.

"It's better than I expected, easier," there seems to be some truth in this, for by this point she seems to be in full control of her new limbs, able to move them to better examine them in the mirror, "I expected it to feel strange, different, so maybe that's a disappointment. I'm not disappointed with the results, but I expected it to take more adjusting. I'm kind of, well, me. It feels natural."

She turns back to the camera, holding out her right arm, spreading the two halves as far apart as she's able, "This, you know, it's not bad, but looking at it you'd think it would be hard to figure out. It's not."

Clearly having a hard time articulating her experience she ends with a shrug, continuing to hold up her arm in front of the camera. Despite this her statement does provide rare insight into the less commonly considered mental changes a B.O.W. clearly needs to go through. Without fail every known B.O.W. has been able to instantly adjust to and make use of its unique mutations, even ones that occur spontaneously after its initial creation. 'Tracy's' comments merely confirm what was already known, but that confirmation is still valuable.

"The instincts that you needed probably came along with the mutation, to make things easier, you know?" 'Ian' offers.

She nods, then notices that once again the camera is focused on something other than her new or transformed limbs.

"Yeah, you should probably find something to cover yourself, your clothes didn't survive the whole fire part," 'Ian' laughs.

Hissing, Tracy opens her mouth, a previously hidden set of pointed mandibles stretching out from her lower jaw.

'Ian' staggers back and screams, dropping the camera in the process. All that is visible from this point forward in the video is one of the table legs and part of a wall, though 'Ian' can be heard running and 'Tracy' follows him, clicking her mandibles. The sounds of 'Ian' slamming into a door and fumbling with the lock follow.

Most of the versions of the film available online cut off at this point, leaving the viewer to imagine what follows. Needless to say there's no shortage of theorizing, especially by those who haven't seen the full version of the film. Those who have suggest that there's a reason the 'cut version' is more widely available, that the BSAA, not being able to stop the distribution of such films entirely, instead works to make sure that the ones that fit the prevailing narrative on B.O.W.s are the most widely seen.

In the full version laughter can be heard, clearly 'Tracy's' because it cuts off in a series of buzzing clicks.

"Don't! Ever! Do that! Again!" 'Ian's' outraged shout follows seconds later.

"Fine, fine," Tracy lets out another buzzing laugh, "You're right about the clothing though. I wasn't expecting anything this…"

Footsteps move towards the camera as the pair return. The view shifts wildly as 'Ian' picks up the camera.

"So? What were you gonna say?" 'Ian' appears to be checking the camera for damage as it continues to film, "Jeez, I'm serious that you really need a bath or something to wash up, and –"

He stops abruptly, the camera coming to focus on the floor, his sneaker clad feet visible for a moment before he once again gets the camera aimed at 'Tracy'. She smiles at him, urging him to continue, which he does, albeit with marked hesitance.

"You…do have plans about what you're gonna do next, right? I mean, I know the international laws and all, but that doesn't mean you can exactly parade around town going to work or grocery shopping with…those, right? Have you really thought this through?"

Her smile falters for a moment and she shrugs.

'Ian' turns off the camera at this point, leaving what happens next a mystery.

To date neither of the pair has been found and no one has come forward to identify them, leaving their real who they are and where the video was filmed a mystery. The investigation is ongoing, but little progress has been made.


	10. Voyeur

**Summary:** On the cusp of victory Wesker finds himself utterly transfixed by the actions of a certain former BSAA agent. After all this time he'd assumed that there was nothing she could do that would surprise him, but he's amazed to learn that he was wrong.

 **Characters:** Albert Wesker, Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield

 **Notes:** An AU of RE5, my attempt to get into Wesker's head. I found that he's a hard character to write, a lot of fun, but very difficult.

o0o

Wesker watched the security camera feed, puzzling over what exactly it was that he was seeing. Something futile, that much was obvious, but the exact nature of the doomed plan eluded him. It was an amusing diversion while waiting for his own plans to come to fruition, far more fascinating than any distraction Excella could offer, so he continued to watch, confident that he could put a stop to it as soon as it ceased to fun. In a few short hours it would all be over, Uroboros would be released and there was no one left who could stop him so there was no reason that he shouldn't enjoy himself while waiting.

How easy it had all been in the end was almost disappointing. Chris Redfield had, predictable as always, hesitated at the thought of fighting his beloved Jill, and that had been his downfall. The woman he'd been with had put up an admirable fight, but she was only human and in the end dispatching her had been as easy as swatting a fly. Chris on the other hand, he'd been expecting a challenge from and for a short time things had looked promising. There was a moment when he had Jill dead to rights, but in a display of profound naivety, he'd lowered his gun and attempted to reason with her, as though anything he could say had a hope of breaking P30's hold on her. As it was, Jill followed her orders perfectly and attacked without hesitation.

Letting her kill Chris and then leaving her behind had been tempting. Eventually the P30 would wear off and she'd be free to do as she wished, his reward to her for being an able, if unwilling, assistant, but it didn't feel right. After all he'd endured letting things end like that for his old S.T.A.R.S. compatriots wasn't in the least bit fitting. They deserved more, and so did he. Victory without someone to celebrate it with rang hollow and so he had allowed Jill to keep Chris in a chokehold until he passed out and ordered her to release him. Then he had Chris restrained for safe transport back to the Tricell facility. Half way there Chris had regained consciousness and resumed trying to reason with Jill. Jill sat there, utterly impassive, giving no outward sign of hearing any of the pleading, but he knew the truth, that Chris' begging was hurting her far worse than anything he'd put her through. She could hear every last word and was powerless to do anything. Knowing that gave him some small measure of satisfaction, as did tasking Jill to lock Chris away in one of the facility's holding cells so that he'd be safely out of the way until it was all over. Once it was all over he would be able to show Chris the glory of what he had created and Chris would either survive or perish at the unfettered power of Uroboros. He hoped that Chris would be worthy, but if not there would be other matters for him to concern himself with, such as the shaping a new world, one of infinite potential.

Explicit orders and an extra dose of P30 saw to it that there would be no risk of Chris escaping before that point and he had left Jill to her own devices.

He'd expected that she would stay by Chris' cell, waiting near her beloved for as long as she was able. Wesker knew that she was fighting him, increasingly frequent doses of P30 were necessary to keep her obedient and it had reached the point where the size of the dose needed would have put anyone else into a coma from which they would likely never awaken. He had to admire Jill for her strength and determination, it was such a shame that fate had them on opposite sides of the whole affair. If not she certainly would have been a far superior companion to the insufferable Excella. The only reason that arrogant bitch was still alive was because he wanted to see the look on her face when she realized that all her wealth and influence meant nothing to Uroboros and, in the unlikely event that she was one of the few genetically worthy individuals, it would be interesting to see how she would live with the loss of all the petty things that meant so much to her. Excella was pathetic, utterly predictable, Jill on the other hand…

He'd expected her to remain with Chris, perhaps even going so far as to wait in the cell with him, but she hadn't, proving that even after all this time she still had surprises for him.

So he watched her, enjoying the suspense as she made her way through the compound to one of the labs. All the researchers had been disposed of by that point so he couldn't imagine what she was doing, much less what she hoped to find.

The lab she went to was behind a locked door, but she knew all the codes and entered without difficulty. She went straight to the back of the room, to the refrigeration unit that was protected by yet another set of codes, which she again had. There was only one thing of importance in that unit, samples of the original, unrefined Uroboros strain and she took a vial of it.

Of all the things he had imagined her doing this was so far removed that he couldn't help but watch. What was she going to do with the useless thing?

She went back towards the lower security wing of the labs and entered one of the rooms where early stage processing had been done. There she began to rummage through cabinets and drawers, searching for something.

The excitement had him on the edge of his seat and by the time she found what it was, he was actually leaning forward. Uroboros would soon be released, he would become a god among men and the antics of a single woman held him captivated. The objective of her frantic search was as intriguing as it was mundane. Syringes.

What exactly was she doing within the confines of the limited freedom he had given her?

She was immune to Uroboros so she couldn't kill herself with the sample she'd retrieved and her orders were to see to it that Chris remained alive until Uroboros was released, so it wasn't as though she could use it to kill Chis to deprive him of the fullness of his victory. Besides, such an action was utterly uncharacteristic of her.

Of her two nonoptions she went with the first, rolling back her sleeve and injecting herself.

Then she waited. There was a clock on the wall and she was watching it, staring at it as intensely as he was watching her.

She had a plan then, one that was utterly inscrutable to him, which made it all the more fascinating.

A half hour passed during which she stood motionless, staring at the clock.

Finally she picked up another syringe, an action he was certain was deliberate. His suspicions were confirmed when she held it up to the light and then looked back down on the table, double checking that the contaminated syringe was still there.

Yes, there was clearly a method to the madness he was watching unfold.

She drew her own blood with admirable skill, collecting several vials worth. Of course she was well versed in such things, having helped him with the collection and testing of various samples. Now she had collected some samples of her very own and the question of what she planned to do with them was utterly captivating. What had Redfield ever done to deserve the affections of such a woman? Not that he cared of course, he was beyond such petty things, or so he liked to tell himself, because honestly, what was his current course of actions if not petty self-indulgence? There were so many more important things he could be doing in preparation for his success, but instead he was sitting watching the security feed as though nothing else mattered. Then again at this point it could be argued that nothing else did matter at this point. His success was assured, it was already too late for any attempt at stopping what had been set in motion. The drone was already in the air, missiles carrying Uroboros would soon be launched and while some would be shot down before they reached their destination they would still release their payload.

On screen Jill put the samples in the centrifuge, prompting him to stand up so quickly that he knocked his chair over.

There was no way that Jill was doing what he thought. In the same way people tended to anthropomorphize animals he must have been attributing motivation to her actions based on his own expectations.

Excella must have been waiting in the hall, for she ran in, making some pointless fuss, last minute doubts by the sounds of it. She was seeking his reassurance that his plan would work, though her interpretation of the results continued to be hopelessly flawed, something he'd deliberately failed to correct her on. Not bothering to look away from the video monitor he waved her away and when that didn't work he turned and backhanded her. Not hard enough to do any lasting harm, but he didn't hold back either. She was sent sprawling and crawled off muttering in Italian. That was one of the few things that amused him about her, that for all her sophistication she cursed like a sailor. Maybe she thought that he was too stupid to realize what she was saying? As though her tone didn't make it clear.

The centrifuge stopped.

One by one Jill removed the vials, inspecting each one in turn to make sure that the contents were properly separated.

Again he had to be reading too much into her actions. She had watched him, assisted him countless times, but to think that she remembered any of it, much less sought to replicate it on her own.

And yet…

Another clean syringe as selected.

The security feed wasn't clear enough for him to actually see the contents of the vials, but he knew exactly what she was doing as she lowered the syringe into them one at a time, collecting what she withdrew in an empty vial she'd set aside. She was withdrawing the separated plasma from the top of each vial.

Damn it! Redfield didn't deserve her, something he planned to make clear when he went down to retrieve his captive. Excella wanted to sit beside him as an equal in his new world, but how could she hope to hold a candle to the events playing out before him? Even the imminent release of Uroboros paled in comparison to the events unfolding before him. There would be plenty of time for him to enjoy the fruits of his labors later, but this, once it was over it would be as though it had never happened.

Jill took her collected sample, useful for only the most pathetic of gestures and hurried down the hall, back towards the holding cell.

A soft chime let him know that the unmanned craft carrying the Uroboros laden missiles had been shot down.

On the screen he could see Jill break into a run. She'd heard it too and knew exactly what it meant. She though that she was racing against time, unaware that the lab was sealed and sterile. Or maybe she did know, but feared that he would come to interrupt her before she completed her little plan. Did she worry that he would enter that very hall at any moment and catch her in the act?

She entered Chris's cell.

Immediately he ceased struggling against his restraints and watched her. He was talking, but there was no sound on the feed, truly a shame. He wanted to know if Redfield was still trying to reason with her or if he'd moved on to asking why.

Then Chris caught sight of the syringe.

The ensuing struggle was brief and ended with him face down on the floor of the cell, Jill's knee between his shoulder blades to hold him pinned. Oh how he wished that there was sound to the video. He so wanted to know what he was saying to her, especially now. Would it be ill informed pleas for mercy or equally misguided accusations of treachery?

Jill injected him with the serum and hurried out of the cell.

Wesker let out the breath that until that moment he hadn't even realized he'd been holding.

What he'd just watched had been amazing. Jill had actually attempted to inoculate Chris against Uroboros.

The show over, he looked away from the screen to the clock on the wall. By his estimate it would be less than ten minutes until the remaining missiles detonated, releasing their payload over major population centers.

One last look at the security feed revealed that once again Jill wasn't waiting by Chris' cell, not that he could blame her. Unaware of the truly amazing show he'd been a participant in Chris had resumed his struggles, though this time he appeared to be shouting as well, no doubt saying things that Jill had no desire to hear. Or perhaps she was leaving him in hopes of covering up what she had done. Either way the little drama that had played out had been a delightful prelude to the victory so close at hand.

By the looks of things Jill was heading towards the very room in which he was watching her from. That was fine, if she made it in time she would be a fine companion with whom to share his moment of triumph. In anticipation he set the screens in front of him to show him an exterior feed, so that he might watch as it happened. Besides, there was no need for Jill to realize that he knew what she'd done. Having it stay a secret made it all the more enjoyable, especially considering what was sure to follow.


	11. Burrow Your Way To My Heart

**Summary:** A Resident Evil 0 AU in which Rebecca's trusting nature and curiosity get the better of her after she gets separated from Billy and runs into someone else.

 **Characters:** Rebecca Chambers, James Marcus, and Billy Coen

 **Notes:** Titled after the song 'Burrow Your Way to My Heart' by Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. I wasn't listening to that song as I wrote this, but it worked as a title so I went with it.

o0o

Rebecca hadn't realized how much she had been relying on Billy until he was gone. It went to show just how far in over her head she was, that the criminal she was supposed to recapture was far more competent than she was. Then again, she'd never thought that she'd end up in what amounted to an actual combat situation. When she applied for the job she'd figured that working as part of a private security team in a quiet little city in the middle of nowhere would be easy. Besides, her skill set meant that she should have been holding a desk job or working in a lab somewhere. She hadn't taken into account that Raccoon City wouldn't have any shortage of lab technicians and that she'd be handed a gun and expected to use it. Use it against what? Nothing happened in Raccoon City.

And then everything had happened at once, the perfect storm of security breaches and biomedical research gone wrong. Throw in an escaped criminal to the mix and it was understandable why she was overwhelmed.

At least with Billy around things had still seemed somewhat sane. Now that she was on her own how crazy the things she'd seen were was finally starting to sink in. Monsters, giant bugs, zombies and director Marcus' insane grandson running around doing who knew what. The one thing she could think of that sort of made sense was that he was behind it. For whatever reason Marcus' grandson had something against Umbrella, or maybe Raccoon City in general, and she and the rest of the team she'd been a part of had just happened to get caught up in the middle of it all.

Opening a door brought her into yet another hallway full of zombies. The zombies themselves weren't even the craziest part, the craziest part was that she was thankful for the zombies. Ever since she realized that she wasn't going to be getting a desk job like she'd expected she'd been terrified that she might have to shoot at a person, even though logically she knew the odds of that were vanishingly small. Shooting zombies was easy because there was nothing person-like about them, the way they moved, sounded, smelled, everything, it was easy to distance herself from what she was doing. Like the one she was shooting at right now, its movements were jerky and irregular, reminding her of a windup toy or a stop-motion monster in an old horror movie. She shot it in the chest and greenish black slime poured out of the wound in thick globs. They landed on the floor with a wet splat and started to ooze towards her.

She fought back a cry of disgust, it wasn't a zombie, it was another of the things she'd taken to thinking of as leech men. They didn't even make sense, leeches weren't supposed to be eusocial, and even if they were there was no reason for them to imitate the human form.

The thing swung at her with an arm that was little more than a stretchy tentacle, but she was far enough away that she was able to dodge out of the way and back out through the door she had entered by. Slamming it behind her she let out a sigh of relief. That was probably the only good thing about the leech men, they couldn't open doors.

"What now?" she asked herself out loud, wishing that Billy was there with her. It was insane, she was so desperate that the company of a war criminal, a man guilty of multiple murders, was preferable to being alone.

A laugh answered her.

"Who's there?" she spun around and found herself face to face with Marcus' grandson.

The man was looking at her as though she was some particularly fascinating spectacle. It was a sort of look she was used to though, she got it a lot due to her age and petite build. It was no secret that a lot of the other S.T.A.R.S members thought she was hopelessly under qualified.

He broke into a smile that was, if not friendly, at least not hostile, and asked a question of his own, "What exactly do you hope to accomplish here?"

"I…uh…" she hated being put on the spot like this. She was the one with the gun, a member of an elite security organization and an unarmed madman was making her feel like a helpless little girl, "I should be asking you the same question."

Steadying herself she kept the gun aimed at his head. She knew that she should have been aiming for center mass, her aim was that bad, but at this range she was doing the right thing, wasn't she? Marcus' grandson stared at her, not at all intimidated.

"I'm intend to continue my research, I've as good as had my revenge," he said dismissively, going so far as to turn his back to her, "Umbrella has no way of recovering from this."

"So you were the one who made all the monsters?" she took a step towards him, not sure if she intended to grab him and make him turn around or not.

"All of the monsters?" he turned to look at her, his expression one of dry amusement, "Not all of them, not even most of them. They were made here using research stolen from me. I simply let them out."

It made sense, she'd seen the labs, the cages and holding tanks, even before all that she'd had an idea of the supplies being shipped up to the research facilities. Even worse, it made S.T.A.R.S. make sense. There was no reason for a quiet little city to have an organization like that, but if there were monsters that might escape…

"What exactly is going on here?" she was doing it again, the same thing she'd done with Billy she was doing with Marcus' grandson, giving him the benefit of the doubt when there was no good reason to do so. She wasn't cut out for this sort of thing and the moment it was all over she was going to resign.

The moment it was all over. All she had to do was survive until then.

"You really are inquisitive, aren't you?" his smile became, if not friendly, subtly less menacing, "What would you say if I were to show you?"

"I…"

"My research that is," he continued, ignoring her attempt at responding, "I think I'm on the verge of a major breakthrough."

He brushed past her and opened the door she had just come out of.

"Wait!" she finally found her voice, "There's a -"

"Don't worry about it," he cut her off. Sure enough the leech man made no move to attack him and when it reached towards her he simply put a hand on its shoulder and watched as it dissolved into a puddle of leeches. The individual parasites slithered away, disappearing down through grates in the floor, "They're failures, my earliest attempts at replicating a most remarkable and unexpected result of my research. I think I've figured out what went wrong though."

As he spoke he bent down to pick up one of the last remaining leeches. Holding it carefully in the palm of his hand he ran a finger along its slimy body as though it were a pet rather than a disgusting worm. Smiling he held it out to her. Somehow the thing sensed her and raised the front half of its body, revealing a large mouth ringed with rows of black, hook-like teeth. It swayed back and forth, stretching to nearly twice its length in its attempt to get to her.

Covering her mouth she struggled not to gag.

Shrugging, Marcus' grandson slipped it into the pocket of the ragged, stained lab coat that he was wearing, which probably explained where a lot of the stains had come from, "They want to mimic the human form, but they can't, at least not properly."

"I've seen," she said weakly, "But why would you want them to do that?"

"Because they've done it before and I want to see if I can make it happen again, deliberately," he spoke as though this were the most obvious thing in the world, though considering the rest of what she'd seen of the research that had been taking place it made about as much sense as any of it.

The whole time they'd been talking he'd kept walking down the hall and she'd been following. He stopped when they reached a door that she hadn't noticed before. When he opened it she looked past him and saw that it opened into an access hallway narrow enough that if they were to go into it they'd have to walk single file.

The hall was totally dark, not even emergency lighting inside.

Marcus' grandson entered without hesitation.

"This way, I've got a makeshift lab set up in an old storage room. It's where I've been raising more leeches," he held out his hand, gesturing for her to follow, "The latest batch will be hatching soon."

Without thinking she grabbed it and held on. His grip was cold and slick, probably slime left over from the leech he'd been holding earlier. It was also surprisingly strong.

She was starting to piece things together. Director Marcus had brought his grandson into work with him because nepotism was very much a thing, especially in big companies like Umbrella. So Marcus' grandson had been working on some project involving colonial leeches, which, if she was to be honest with herself, made more sense than anything she'd encountered so far. Animal behavior and the modification thereof was an actual field of study that had potential. Something must have gone wrong though, maybe Marcus' grandson had been let go by the company after Marcus died, but he'd managed to continue his research in secret, blaming Umbrella for firing him and not letting him take credit for what he'd worked on with his grandfather. His response was extreme, but no more so than Harry Harlow who'd decided to single handedly ruin the field of animal behavior study just because he was angry and he could. Marcus' grandson wanted to show her his pet leeches, which, in the scheme of things was far less horrifying than anything Harlow had done. That she was using Harlow's work as a measure of what wasn't crazy went to show how badly wrong things were.

"I think the problem is twofold," Marcus' grandson spoke, his voice confident despite the total darkness engulfing them once the door swung closed behind her, "The subjects I used were already infected with the Tyrant Virus, though in my defense I had assumed that the infection would work to facilitate the process considering that the virus was created by using sequences taken from leech DNA to modify the original Progenitor strain. In later experiments I infected my pets with the modified virus so seemed logical that it would make the subject more receptive to them. Instead I believe it only served to compromise the subject, encouraging the leeches to overtake them before creating a proper framework for their mimicry. They can manage the basic shape, but all the finer details are lost. A further confounding variable might be that the leeches I'm using have already imprinted. They may be trying to mimic my form rather than that of the subject and, as a result, not succeeding in either."

"Wait, imprinted?" her mind was spinning. Imprinting was a thing, it happened in birds, but she was pretty sure that it required the animal to have an actual brain and some semblance of self-awareness.

"Yes," Marcus' grandson laughed, "It was so unexpected when it happened that at first I'd simply assumed that they were responding to my feeding them, but there was far more to it than that. Once I started feeding them live prey I realized that their response to me was different. By that time it was obvious that they worked together as a single cohesive whole, but what I had yet to catch on to was that they reacted to me as though I was part of that whole."

The scattered notes they'd found in the training facility hadn't belonged to Director Marcus, or at least not all of them. Some of it had been from the work of his grandson. It was all impossible of course, except she'd seen what he'd done to the leech man. Curiosity drove her on, and besides, she hadn't been attacked by anything since accompanying him. Maybe if she could make it until dawn with him she'd have a chance. It she made it until dawn she decided that she was done. She'd get out of the city and reveal everything she'd seen to the proper authorities, whoever they were in a situation like this.

The only sign that there was anything up ahead was the thin line of dull red light along the floor. It was so faint that she didn't even see it until Marcus' grandson stopped.

There was a moment of confusion until she realized that she could hear the sound of water and the hum of pumps. This must have been where he continued his research in secret after his grandfather died. Being in the dark with a madman was no more or less terrifying than anything else she'd been through so far, the only difference was that this was at least interesting. Everything so far had been all monsters and running, this at least had logic behind it. Besides, if what he was saying was true she was about to get a tour of a lab in which a major scientific breakthrough had happened. Maybe when it was all over, when she quit S.T.A.R.S. she'd be able to use what she'd seen to get a job at some reputable place. For what he'd done Marcus' grandson was bound to end up getting arrested, but something would have to happen with what he'd been working on. She wasn't about to continue Marcus' leech work herself, but there was someone who was sure to be interested and find value in it. After all if it worked with leeches it might work with other invertebrates and that had potential. Bees that recognized their keepers and wouldn't sting, or maybe be used like farm animals, pollinating crops. Swarms of ladybugs working as natural pest control or grasshoppers that only ate weeds. That sort of thing could actually help people.

She could hear keys jangling as he opened what sounded like a padlock. Even hidden away he was paranoid.

Finally the door opened and for the first time since entering the hall she could see. Heat lights filled the small room with a warm red glow. It was ominous, how the red light made all the shadows even darker, but it was still light.

The entire room was filled with tanks and tubs of water. All of them contained leeches, swimming back and forth, stuck to the glass, oozing over the rims and sliding along the floor. Marcus' grandson strode confidently into the room while she stepped cautiously after him, terrified of misstepping and feeling something squish underfoot, or even worse, slipping in one of the puddles of slime and falling. There were leeches all over the floor and she was sure that if she were to fall they'd all start crawling her way.

Marcus took the time to check the water level of several tanks, reaching in to move leeches from tank to tank, before motioning for her to come over.

"This is it," he smiled, looking down into a tub of water that was nearly waist high, "The latest batch. They're going to be a success, I can feel it."

Unlike the others it had a lid. There were dozens of leeches sitting on top and Marcus' grandson carefully removed them one by one, returning them to the tanks lining the walls. Maybe he was right about them recognizing him, because as far as she could tell not a single one of them tried to bite him. When the last leech was safely put away he smiled at her, his face a mask of shadows in the irregular lighting, and took the lid off

There were no leeches in the tank, at least not any she could see. Instead looked like it was full of small, round beads.

"Eggs?" she asked, leaning in for a closer look, half expecting to feel Marcus' grandson's hands on her back, shoving her in.

Instead he leaned over next to her, "Yes, and they're already hatching."

Now that he'd said as much she realized that she could see fine black ribbons swimming between the eggs.

"What now?" she wondered, simultaneously fascinated and repulsed.

"You're going to feed them!" he rubbed his hands together with almost childish glee.

Her hand immediately went to her gun, which she'd holstered during their walk through the darkness, afraid of what might have happened if she were to trip. Marcus' grandson had already turned away from her by the time she unholstered it, leaving her feeling embarrassed that her first thought was that he had intended to push her in with the leeches. Instead he was putting on a pair of thick leather gloves, the kind that went all the way up to the elbow, like someone might use when handling a dangerous animal.

"To avoid contamination," he explained, reaching into what she had thought was another tank of leeches on a shelf higher than the rest, but she'd been mistaken in her assumption. Rather than a leech, he pulled out a large rat which he killed with a practiced ease.

"Hold on to this," he shoved it against her chest and she reflexively grabbed at it, "This way it smells like you when you give it to them. They have to know that you're the one feeding them."

He held her hand shut over the rat. Too shocked to do anything else she did as told. Given the situation following his instructions was probably the safest thing she could to.

"How long?" she wasn't sure if she was asking how long she needed to hold onto the rat or how long the imprinting process took.

"It should be immediate," he was now holding her hand in both of his, tight enough that the dead rat was being crushed, "These leeches are at the final stage of the process, unlike the ones that I started my research with. They're far smarter, far more eager. I would have succeeded in replicating the process already if not for using contaminated subjects and unthinkingly contaminating the leeches themselves. Enough of them should have hatched by now. Go!"

Letting go of her hands he pushed her towards the tank.

"What do I do?" she stared down at the eggs and leeches undulating at the water's surface.

"Hold it in for them to eat, the smell should encourage the stragglers to emerge," he placed his hands on her shoulders, encouraging her, "Slowly."

Afraid that dropping the rat in would make a splash and send leeches flying in all directions, she carefully lowered the dead rat in by its tail. The water churned as the leeches swarmed the thing, slithering on top of each other in their eagerness. She didn't even get the rat halfway into the water before it was completely covered. They squirmed and writhed on top of it and without thinking she started to raise her hand back up. The leeches clung to it like tar, a sheet of them trailing back down into the water so that others could climb up and continue to feed. Impossibly as it seemed, Marcus' grandson had been right, they were working together, some acting as a living ladder so that others could feed.

Something wet brushed her finger and she dropped the rat with a gasp.

Marcus' grandson laughed, "They're very excited about their first meal."

That much was obvious, a floating matt of leeches washed over the rat, pulling it down under the water.

"Hold your hand over the water," he urged gently.

"Why?" she shuddered.

"Just do it!"

His tone left no room for argument. She did as told and watched as the leeches congregated under the shadow of her hand.

"They're still hungry," she laughed nervously.

"Yes," he agreed and stepped away from her, back to the tank from which he'd taken the rat. Apparently he'd been prepared for this, because he took out a second one, broke its neck and tossed it to her, "Best to let them eat their fill. No sense in tempting any accidents."

This time the leeches actually rose up to meet the rat.

Marcus hurried back to her side, "Hold your free hand over the tank, watch what they do."

Terrified of what would happen, but even more afraid that Marcus' grandson would do if she didn't, she held her hand far above the tank. The leeches didn't react.

"Lower," Marcus' grandson ordered.

Emboldened by the lack of response she let her hand drop another few inches.

Nothing happened.

"Keep going, I'll tell you when to stop."

Slowly, cautiously, she continued to lower hand, inch by fearful inch, until it was at the level at which the leeches had gone for the rat. They swam beneath her hand following its movements, but none of them broke the surface.

"What's going on?" she whispered fearful that at any moment they'd rise out of the water and latch on to her hand.

"They know you're not food," he put a hand on her shoulder, "More than that, they already know that you're the one who feeds them. This is far better than I'd hoped. Put your hand in with them."

"No!" she gasped. That was taking things much farther than she wanted to risk. Even if he was right and they wouldn't attack her, it was still a tank full of leeches. His expression darkened and his grip on her tightened painfully. If she didn't think fast he was going to force her, "The ones that just hatched might still be hungry. Shouldn't we make sure they've all had a chance to eat?"

"Of course!" he let go of her, seemingly pleased in her apparent interest in the leeches' wellbeing. Going back to the rat tank he pulled out a third, "This is the last one. After this we'll either have to get them something more to eat or see if they're ready to hunt on their own. I think your friend survived."

"Billy?" she asked, caught off guard by his sudden non sequitur.

"The one with the tattoos and long hair," he said with a shrug.

He was one to talk, but she refrained from commenting as she took the last rat from him. This time the leeches responded slower, the ones that reached the rat first dropping off after a moment.

"They're bringing back food to the others," Marcus' grandson explained.

And that was exactly what they were doing. The leeches that climbed up onto the rat were passing morsels to the ones still emerging from their eggs. He was right, they were engaging in actual eusocial behavior, impossible as that should have been.

"How does it even work?" she wondered, amazed by what she was seeing.

"I'm not sure," he admitted, "I created the Tyrant strain, but unfortunately it's as much a mystery to me as to anyone else. I've made far more progress with it though, thanks to my leeches."

"They certainly are…" she hesitated, trying to find the right word, "Impressive."

"You have no idea. I had no idea," he laughed bitterly, "At least not until Wesker and his sniveling friend betrayed me."

Her shock at his implicating Wesker in whatever had happened was nothing compared to the terror that came at what followed.

"They had me assassinated, or at least Wesker did. Birkin was far too much of a coward to even dream of something like that."

In the course of everything that had happened she'd somehow managed to forget that Marcus' grandson was completely insane.

He saw the look on her face and laughed, "I'm not bitter about that. I'd thank them for the discovery it brought about, if not for the fact that they stole my research. That I cannot forgive them for."

"What discovery?" she said quickly, hoping to keep him talking long enough to figure out what to do. He had to mean attempted assassination, or perhaps he was being figurative and he was talking about them ruining his career.

"Birkin came in to talk to me while I was working with my pets, asking questions about them and distracting me. He knew that my one weakness was my beloved leeches and he was willing to indulge an old man like that, at least that was the impression he gave. Little did I know that it was a trick, if he enjoyed hearing me out it was only because he imagined what he would do with my findings, to my dear pets. Wesker came in some time later, but said nothing. He and Birkin were inseparable so it was hardly unusual, and I made the mistake of ignoring him. Wesker wasn't interested in my research, or so I'd thought. He tended to be more hands on and found my work too academic for his liking. That was when I found out that research wasn't the only area where he liked to do things hands on. He had a gun with him and while I had my back to him he shot me," Marcus' grandson stopped to shake his head.

He was crazy, that was the only explanation, but at the same time Wesker handpicked all S.T.A.R.S. members and there had to have been something he'd seen in her. On the few occasions they'd spoken he'd been interested in her field of study at college, mentioning that he'd been impressed by how young she was when she graduated. Hints had been dropped that he might be able to get her a position helping with field research if she wanted, which was part of the reason she'd stuck it out in S.T.A.R.S. despite how woefully unprepared she'd been for the reality of the job. So Wesker being involved in research made sense and maybe he had stolen Marcus' grandson's work.

"So maybe Wesker was as much of a coward as Birkin," he continued, "Not that it matters. When I fell to the floor my pets escaped. Wesker must have mistaken their attempts at protecting me for an attack, because he didn't bother checking to see if I was actually dead. Or maybe his contempt was so great that he couldn't imagine that I would be a threat. I'll admit, I don't know what followed, for I quickly lost consciousness. By the time I woke up in disused, partially flooded room, not far from here actually, they were already gone. Abandoned by everyone save my pets. They were diligent in their efforts to save me, using their own bodies to staunch the flow of blood from my injuries, feeding me, and giving me the strength to stay alive. There was only so much they could do though, I was an old man after all, and between my injuries and the filth in which I'd been left to die, my strength couldn't last. Towards the end I could feel them struggling to keep my heart beating, to help me draw every single breath I took. It wasn't through my own strength that I survived, but through their devotion. I had created them, elevated them beyond what they would have been otherwise and they did the same for me. When I was finally able to get up the sight of myself left me shocked. Not only was I alive, I had been restored to my prime."

Rebecca wanted to call him on what he was saying, to point out how crazy he was being, instead she found her mind sticking on one thing, "So your greatest success with the leeches, what you said you've been trying to replicate…"

It was stupid, but she had to know, to hear out the story to the end so that she could find closure and put an end to the madness.

"Yes, what I want to replicate is not what I accomplished with them, but what they accomplished with me," he beamed, spreading his arms wide, "I've been given a second chance, an opportunity to continue my research, but more than that I feel I owe it to my pets to recreate the triumph we reached together. I'll admit, from the moment I first saw you I was inspired, that was why I sought you out."

"What do you mean?" she stood up trying to see if there was room for her to escape, but he was in front of her and the tank of leeches was directly behind.

"I told you already," he took a step closer, "I didn't want to risk spoiling my newest batch of pets with a subject infected with the Tyrant strain. So far that has only resulted in partial success. I think a healthy subject is what they need and you are undeniably healthy, among other things," in the red light it was hard to tell, but he looked embarrassed, "That is to say, you're intelligent, inquisitive, a perfect assistant in my continued research, physical aspects have nothing to do with it. You're young enough to by my granddaughter after all. If I'd had any children, that is, but my work took up far too much of my time for anything like that. My pets are the closest thing I have to family and I'm so proud of them."

"What are you going to do?" she stammered, reaching for her gun.

"Ask you to get in the tank with them," he said as though she was being deliberately slow to catch on, "If that doesn't work we might need to take more extreme measures."

Despite his reassurance that the leeches wouldn't attack her the last thing she intended to do was take a bath with them. Taking a deep breath she drew her gun and switched off the safety. It was going to be just like shooting the zombies, or so she told herself, and besides, he was crazy and going to kill her.

Unfortunately she was right, she shot him twice in the chest and he hardly responded. There was a spray of slime, a dark stain spreading across the front of his lab coat, but he didn't stagger or gasp in pain. Part of the stain broke away, a large leech crawling out of the wound.

Maybe he wasn't crazy, or at least maybe some of what he had said was true. Maybe the leeches had saved him, maybe he was Director Marcus.

"You shouldn't have done that," he sounded more frustrated than anything else, and before she could react he closed the distance between them and grabbed the hand in which she held her gun.

Despite her best efforts it wasn't much of a fight. He pushed her backwards until her legs were touching the tank, then he began to twist her wrist. She expected him to try and force the gun out of her hand, but instead he brought her hand around until she was pointing it at herself and forced her to squeeze off two more shots. The first hit her leg and was less painful than she'd expected, an impact like she'd been punched, but little more. Then the second got her in the stomach.

If not for how he was holding onto her she would have fell to the floor, unable to move because of how bad it hurt. Instead he pulled her up by her arm, cradling her head in his hand so that she could see his face as he slowly, carefully, lowered her down towards the tank of leeches.

Her back hit the wall of the tank, warm water lapped at the back of her head. If not for him holding on she wouldn't have been able to keep her head above the water. He let go of her arm and it dropped into the tank with a splash. Smooth, soft things slid around her fingers, rubbing against her, their movements cautious, curious. The leeches.

She tried to scream, but she wasn't sure if any sound came out. All she could hear was a horrible ringing in her ears and somehow, the sounds of the water. He hooked his arm behind her knees and swung her legs over, into the tank.

The blood from her injuries sent the leeches into a frenzy, she could feel them against her leg, her stomach. Bile filled the back of her throat and she began to choke. She struggled as Marcus moved to hold her down, slopping water out of the tank, but not leeches. Like before they were working together, clinging to each other as they slid over her body, under her clothes. Their touch was gentle, not at all what she'd expected. She could hardly feel their teeth as they lapped at the gunshot wounds. The pain started to fade, leaving her numb. She was aware of pressure on her chest, Marcus' hand holding her down, and of the leeches investigating the wound to her stomach. It was the worse of the two and far more interesting to them.

Rather than anything useful, like the unarmed combat part of her S.T.A.R.S. training, the words of Professor Small came back to her. It had been the first day of Biology three-oh-something, Plant Biology: 'In this class we're going to talk about sex. Everyday it's going to be sex, sex, sex because that's what biology comes down to. Sex.' She'd liked Professor Small a lot, even if he was the kind of Professor who tried too hard to be 'cool'. If only his statement hadn't been so applicable to this situation.

If Marcus was the leeches then his interest in recreating what they'd done to him wasn't purely academic, the way he was looking at her made that much obvious. He, or maybe they, wanted to make something like them for purely primal, instinctual, reasons.

At least it didn't hurt any more, even if she was choking. Maybe that was for the best though, the leeches were swimming around her face, crawling up onto her, but as long as she was choking they wouldn't be able to get into her mouth. Then Marcus let go of her head and she slid beneath the water. It rushed into her mouth and nose, carrying with it slime and leech eggs, but no leeches. They were all forming a raft over her head, blocking Marcus' smiling face from her sight, trapping a shimmering layer of air beneath them. The leeches began to close in like a shroud, pressing the pocket of air against her face, but it was too late, she was already drowning.

The last thought that came to her as she passed out was that the fluttery, wiggly feeling in her stomach wasn't butterflies. For some reason it seemed like the funniest thing imaginable.

o0o

 _After he managed to pull himself out of the underground river he'd ended up in, Billy made his way back to the training facility in hopes of finding Rebecca. It wasn't that he needed her help with anything, or even cared particularly much about her, it was that he saw something of himself in the girl. He'd been a stupid kid in way over his head once too and he wanted to try and make sure that things turned out better for her than they had for him._

 _He searched the facility finding plenty of zombies, both alive and dead, but no sign of Rebecca. After covering all the rooms that he knew they'd been through he started backtracking, looking for places he might have missed. There was no reason for her to still be there, but he had the feeling that she wouldn't have left without him. She seemed like that kind of girl._

 _Finally, after walking past it who knew how many times, he noticed that the door to a maintenance hall was open. He'd ignored it previously, figuring that there was no reason for her to have gone down there, but if something had chased her…_

 _He entered the narrow hall and was surprised to discover that, despite there being no lights, the darkness wasn't total. A distance down the hall he could see a dim light coming from somewhere. Maybe he_ had _found something._

 _Hurrying down the hall he found himself standing in front of a small room, weak red lights illuminating the rows and rows of containers lining the walls. In the center of the room was an enormous vat._

 _A body was floating in the vat._

 _Drawing his gun he stepped cautiously into the room until he was close enough to have his worst suspicions confirmed. It was Rebecca, but maybe she wasn't dead. It looked like she was breathing, but that might have been a trick of the dim light and the way she was bobbing gently in the water._

 _Gun ready and expecting the worst he reached out for her._

 _His hand was just past the edge of the vat when she opened her eyes, took one look at him and started screaming._

" _Easy," he was talking as much to himself as he was to her, having barely managed to avoid shooting her, "Take it easy, it's me."_

 _She blinked several times, wincing, but not making any attempt to get up, "Hi Billy. I…I thought you were Marcus coming back."_

" _You must have been having one hell of a dream," he laughed, relieved that she seemed to be alright. Bending down he held a hand out to her, "Are you okay? Can you get up?"_

 _She laughed back at him, "I think…"_

 _Her voice was weak, uncertain. When she tried to sit up she nearly slipped under the water. That was when she seemed to realize her situation. She started thrashing, slopping water over the sides of the vat and screaming._

 _Bending down he grabbed her and pulled her out of the vat. She must have been there for a long time, despite the room being fairly warm she was cold to the touch, shaking like a leaf._

" _Calm down," he tried to help her to her feet, but she continued struggling, clawing at herself, "You're safe now."_

" _No! The leeches!" she sobbed, "They're all over me! I can feel them!"_

 _She looked at him with pleading eyes, then went back to scratching at her arms and face._

 _He grabbed her hands to keep her from hurting herself and gave her a gentle shake, "Rebecca, calm down. There aren't any leeches. It was a dream."_

 _He still didn't know how she'd ended up there and he wasn't about to try and press her for details seeing how terrified she was, but one thing was for sure, there wasn't a single leech in the whole room. The rows and rows of containers lining the walls were full of cloudy water, but there were no leeches anywhere._

 _Rebecca looked at him, opened and closed her mouth several times, like she was trying to figure out what to say, then looked down at herself._

" _See," he smiled reassuringly, "No leeches. Like I said, you must have been dreaming."_

" _No," she shook her head, staring at something he couldn't see, "Look."_

 _It took him several seconds to see what she was staring at, two small holes in her clothing, one over her stomach, one high up on the leg of her pants, "Alright, maybe something tore your clothes a little, but whatever it was, it didn't break the skin."_

 _For some reason this only served to upset her any more, letting out an anguished wail she fell against him, wrapping her arms around him._

 _For how cold and tired she seemed, she held onto him with an almost desperate strength that caught him off guard._

" _Take it easy," he wrapped his arms around her, "Once you're ready we can get out of here."_

 _Pressed against his chest as hard as she was he could feel that she was shaking her head. Closing his eyes, he sighed. He'd been right about seeing himself in her, another kid in too deep to have any hope of getting out. She'd either talk and tell him what had happened, or wouldn't. It was fine if she didn't, everyone had things that they didn't talk about._


	12. Monsters Inside Me

**Summary:** A direct continuation of the previous chapter, focusing on Rebecca discovering the nature of her condition.

 **Characters:** Rebecca Chambers, Billy Coen, Richard Aiken, Chris Redfield and others

 **Notes:** Because so many people asked for it, Rebecca's misadventures continue, with this chapter taking her through the events of Resident Evil. Yes, I left a lot out, but mostly it was an effort to tell a tighter story by removing the more videogame-y feeling moments of the game and keep things focused on Rebecca rather than everything else going on.

o0o

"Stop!" Rebecca grabbed Billy before he could open the door, "There's one of them in there!"

"One of what?" he stopped to look warily at the door, hand hovering inches from the knob.

"The leech men," she closed her eyes as she spoke, trying not to think about what had happened in the room where Billy had found her, "Don't you hear it?"

Except as soon as she finished speaking she knew what the answer would be. He didn't hear it because it wasn't making any noise. She hadn't even heard it, she just knew it was there.

Billy didn't even answer her question, instead he looked at her, "Hey, take it easy."

"What?" she stared blankly back, not sure what had prompted the comment or the look of concern.

"Stop it," he put a hand on her arm, at which point she realized that she'd been worrying at the hole in her shirt with her free hand.

"Sorry," she backed away and looked down, not at the floor, but at the second hole in her clothing, the one in her pants leg. Two holes with no sign of injury beneath. Billy hadn't asked her to explain and she didn't know how to even try. She wanted to tell him what had happened, how she'd followed Marcus into the room where Billy had found her and everything that had happened between those two points. But she hadn't, because how would she explain it? She'd been shot, attacked by leeches, drowned, except one of those things wasn't true. The leeches hadn't attacked her. Since Billy had found her she'd replayed those moments over and over again, how the leeches had swarmed to the bullet holes, working their undulating, thread-like bodies deep inside the injuries, how they closed over her face in a solid sheet. That was the last thing she could remember until Billy found her.

She'd woken up in a panic, still able to feel the leeches all over her.

Billy had reassured her that there weren't any, that she was imagining things. There hadn't been a single leech anywhere in the room, but she could still feel them, wriggling and squirming. She'd tried to show him, but there was nothing to see.

Even now she was able to feel them and it took all her effort not to rub at her arms, or scratch at her stomach and leg, where she'd been shot even though there was no sign of it other than the holes in her shirt and pants. There wasn't even blood, the leeches had licked it all away.

Billy was still looking at her.

"I'm fine," she gave what she hoped was a convincing smile, "Were just going to need to find another way."

"That's the quickest way out," Billy glanced meaningfully at the door, "We go through there and then we can get to the woods. Besides, it's probably just a regular zombie."

Somewhere along the line their plan had gone from getting to the bottom of what was happening to simply getting away and she was fine with that. Yes, she was letting Billy take control of the situation, the exact opposite of what she should have been doing, but Billy actually knew what he was doing. Once things were safer she could try and regain control of things, but right now safety seemed a long way off, especially when Billy had his hand on the doorknob again.

"We can't," she begged, gripping at her own arms and trying to make the horrible squirming feeling stop. The leeches were still there, swimming beneath her skin.

"Even if there's one of them they're slow," from his tone it was obvious that Billy thought she was imagining things, that all the leeches were imaginary, "We can run and get past it before it has the chance to grab either of us."

"No!"

The leech man must have heard her because as she shouted it slammed into the door. The soft squelching sound of the impact made it clear that she was right about what it was.

"Alright, change of plans," Billy grimaced.

She was about to let out a sigh of relief only to realize that he was taking off the backpack he had picked up somewhere and rummaging around in it. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for, a bottle and a torn scrap of fabric. While they'd been apart he'd replenished his supply of Molotov cocktails, a good thing since the gun she'd been carrying was nowhere to be found. They'd searched the leech room, but other than the empty shell casings there wasn't a trace of it, yet another thing that Billy hadn't asked her to explain.

He took a lighter out of his pocket and took a few steps back from the door, "When I tell you to open it up and get out of the way."

That was something she could manage. She didn't want to even look at the leech man, but getting away from it was something she could do without needing to look at it. All she had to do was move straight back.

Closing her eyes she turned the knob.

The leech man slammed into the door again, knocking it open with enough force that it hit her in the face. Tears welled up in her eyes from the pain and she fell to the floor. Luckily the monster ignored her entirely, shambling past her. She could hear Billy shouting, trying to draw its attention, something she was grateful for because all she could focus on was the pain she was in.

She brought her hands up to her nose and wasn't surprised to find that it was bleeding freely, nor was she surprised that even the most cautious attempts at touching it made the pain even worse. Her nose was broken, but that wasn't the worst part of it. It wasn't even the way the blood made it hard to breathe.

No, the worst part was easily how she could feel things moving in the blood, crawling up her face and trying to get back in. That part didn't hurt, in fact the pain seemed to diminish as the leeches did whatever it was that they were doing. She could feel them wiggling in her nose, making it even harder to breathe, until suddenly, she felt cartilage and bone start sliding back into position. They were trying to fix her broken nose, holding everything in place so it could heal properly. It was disgusting, but at the same time she couldn't help but notice that the pain was fading.

Cautiously she poked at her nose, the leeches were all inside so she couldn't feel their slimy little bodies, just sticky trails of blood that were already starting to dry. The leeches had stopped the bleeding.

Blinking tears from her eyes she looked down at her hands. They were covered in blood from her nose and in the blood she could see at least half a dozen fine black strands writhing in the drying blood. She wanted to clench her fists, squish them, but she was afraid to. What if in doing so she provoked the rest of them to attack? They were all inside her and if they wanted to they could tear her apart from the inside.

Across the room the leech man hissed and thrashed as it died in fire. Leeches dripped off its body, slithering away in all directions. One of them inched towards her. The leeches in her palm aligned like compass needles, two of them actually rearing up. Small as they were it was hard to tell, but she had the feeling that their mouths were open, tiny hooked fangs scratching at the air. Taking a chance she stomped down on the leech oozing across the floor. Instantly the leeches in her palm relaxed and resumed their aimless wiggling as they searched for a way back inside. They were jealous little things then, or if that was giving them too much credit they were at least protective.

Beneath her skin the leeches mirrored the movements of the ones stranded on her palm. They could sense each other and were interacting in some way. She could see her skin twitching from their movements, then suddenly, painlessly the ones on her palm began to burrow. There was no pain, just a slight feeling of pressure, then they were gone. All that remained was the blood that had already been there and, if she looked very closely, maybe the slightest swelling to show where they were using their bodies to seal the injury. She rubbed at her palm and the leeches responded to the touch by pressing against the surface of her skin.

"Are you okay?"

She'd been so engrossed in watching the leeches that she didn't realize that Billy was standing next to her, offering her a hand up, until he'd spoken.

She looked up at him and immediately turned away, to stare at the sizzling remains of the leech man. She wasn't going to end up like that, Marcus hadn't ended up like that and he'd said his goal was to make someone like him. He'd said a lot of other things too, but so far she seemed fine, except for the obvious.

"Rebecca?"

He was starting to sound worried which made her feel even worse. How pathetic was she that the criminal she had tried to apprehend felt bad for her?

"The door hit my nose," she said quietly.

Kneeling down in front of her, Billy looked at her face, "There's a lot of blood, but it doesn't look broken."

"I know," she looked down at the floor, "It just scared me and…never mind."

As much as she wanted to tell him what had happened while they were separated she couldn't. There was nothing he could do to help and there was no way he would believe her, which was probably for the best. Rubbing at her face one last time she allowed Billy to help her to her feet and walk her to the door.

Like that it was over. They were outside and it was almost dawn. If she wanted to she could follow through with her original plan of finding the others and resign. That seemed like the best course of action, except for one detail, she had no idea where Billy was going other than into the woods in the opposite direction of where she planned on going.

"Wait!" she hurried after him.

He stopped and looked at her, his expression unreadable, "Why?"

"Where are you going?" after all they'd been through together she would have expected that he at least would have explained what his plan was rather than leaving her in the dark.

"Away from here," he shrugged, "I figure this is my best chance."

"But we need to go that way," she gestured back in the direction of the mansion, "That's where the team is meeting up."

"Where your team is meeting up," he corrected, "Which is why I'm going this way."

"Oh…"

Trying to stop him was useless, especially when he was the one with the gun. She'd almost managed to forget that they'd only been working together out of necessity and now that they were safe their goals diverged radically. All she could do was watch him walk away into the predawn gloom.

She knew that she'd let him get away without even trying, but what good would trying have done her?

Struggling not to cry she made her way through the woods to the mansion.

Luck was with her and nothing attacked her on the way there, except she knew that luck had nothing to do with it. If there were monsters out there they were probably after other things.

The mansion itself was in disarray, blood everywhere, but none of it was fresh. Whatever had happened hadn't been recent. That meant she was probably the first of the team to arrive. Logically she should stay in one place and wait, but the thought of waiting alone and unarmed in a building filled with who knew what was terrifying.

She told herself that she was going to look for something to use as a weapon, but she knew that even if she found something she wouldn't be any better off than she was now. What she really needed was a place to hide and wait while she gathered her thoughts and figured out what to do once the others arrived, or didn't arrive, which though unthinkable, was far more likely.

Taking care to avoid any of the halls and rooms where she heard any noise she made her way to what must have the servant's quarters, and there she found a bedroom that wasn't in as terrible shape as the rest of the place.

Closing the door behind her she sat down on the bed, intending to simply gather her thoughts and figure out what to.

Beneath her skin the leeches squirmed.

She rubbed at her arms, feeling them move back and forth, following the motion of her hands, just like they had in the tank of water. Even inside her they responded to her. Marcus had said that they had imprinted on her, because she had fed them. What would happen if they got hungry again? Could she starve them out of her or would they turn on her and eat her from the inside out? She shuddered and rocked on the bed, wrapping her arms around herself. How was she supposed to feed them? Since they were inside her would they behave like internal parasites, robbing food from her? Or would they still be leeches and drink her blood? Probably not. As many of them as there must have been inside her, she wasn't feeling any of the signs of blood loss. So they were probably more like tapeworms then. Once it was over she could get treated with whatever it was they used to kill intestinal parasites and she'd be fine.

It was just that there were an awful lot of leeches in her. What would happen when they all died?

No, she wasn't going to think about that, not now at least.

Instead she got up and went to the small washroom adjacent to the bedroom. There she turned on the tap and was relieved to discover that the water was still running. She let the water warm up before washing the blood and slime from her hands and face. Afterwards she felt slightly better, being able to breathe through her nose again helped, even if the leeches had seemed to enjoy the warmth of the water, or at least that was what she chose to interpret their movements as.

Feeling more confident she decided to resume her search for the rest of the team. If even half of what Marcus had said was true they were all in far more danger than they knew, especially if Captain Wesker was working for Umbrella. She'd seen enough that she had no doubt that Umbrella had made the monsters they'd been dealing with and if she and her fellow STARS members found out too much during their investigation they'd be in danger

So sitting around waiting to be rescued wasn't an option.

Besides, thanks to what Marcus had done to her, she might at least stand a chance if something attacked her.

As she learned the moment she opened the door to leave, she was in far less danger than she'd anticipated. There was a zombie waiting in the hall outside, but it hardly reacted to her. It made sense in a way, there had been times where she and Billy had encountered zombies and leech men in the same area and there had been no interaction between the two. Her best guess was the leeches emitted some sort of pheromone that prevented the zombies from seeing her as prey. Whatever the reason it was something she could use to her advantage.

Walking past the zombie she began her search.

Occasionally she would find dead zombies and spent shell casings, showing where a fight had taken place and there were times when she would hear gunfire elsewhere in the mansion, but by the time she made it to where she thought the noise was coming from it was all over. All she was doing was running in circles, dodging zombies and chasing echoes while the rest of her team was in danger, a constant reminder of how useless she was.

At least the leeches had started to calm down, they were moving a lot less and were easier to ignore. It was still horrible, but it was something she'd at least be able to live with until she got rid of them.

On her second lap past the one lit fireplace that she'd come across she stopped to pick up a poker, finally doing what she'd told herself she was going to do at the start and grabbing a weapon. Originally she hadn't wanted to risk fighting the zombies, but with the way they ignored her the thought of trying to fight them was a lot less intimidating. Besides, every one she dealt with was one less thing that could hurt the others. That way she wasn't completely useless.

With the first zombie she killed she learned two important things, killing them by caving their skulls in was more effective than shooting them, and that killing something through blunt force trauma wasn't as easy as the movies made it look.

By her fourth zombie she had a pattern, line herself up with the zombie so that she could swing the poker like a baseball bat to hit them across the bridge of the nose, push them to the floor and then hit them the two or three more times it took to keep them down for good. It worked very well against individual zombies, enough so that she decided to try and take out a group of them that had been blocking off one of the halls. She hadn't tried to get by them because she knew that it would mean needing to actually shove past them and that was more than she was ready to try. Now she was armed and had a plan, so it wouldn't be too bad.

After hitting the first zombie and knocking it to the floor the others converged on her before she had a chance to finish it off. It seemed that whatever it was that the leeches did wasn't the perfect defense she had assumed it to be.

She swung wildly, but there wasn't enough space for her to manage the kind of momentum she needed to do any actual damage. Realizing her mistake she tried to back away, only for the zombie she had knocked down to grab her leg and pull her to the floor. She fell backwards, the poker flying from her grip when she hit the floor. The others fell on her as one, biting and clawing at her.

Nails raked across her face, scratched uselessly against her vest, when she brought her arms up to try and protect herself she felt teeth sink into her wrists. Inside her the leeches went wild. She could feel them moving through her body, rushing to every bite and scratch, but they made no attempt to close the injuries, instead pouring out onto the zombies.

She screamed and thrashed, trying to get away, but every time she was able to kick one of them off her another took it place. Slime and leeches were flying in all directions.

Somewhere nearby a door slammed and she screamed even louder, hoping that whoever it was might hear and get to her in time.

One of the zombies tried to bite her throat, its head covered in a writhing mass of leeches. Its teeth scraped at her, but it didn't seem to be able to manage to close its mouth. When she grabbed at its head to try and push it away she could feel bone beneath the slime covering it. The leeches were eating it, biting off muscle and tendons one infinitesimal bit at time. Her efforts at pushing it off of her were rewarded by its lower jaw falling away.

There was shouting very close by.

One of the zombies stood up and then fell.

Someone had arrived to save her and they had a gun.

A second zombie broke away from her, apparently more interested in a meal that wasn't full of slime and parasites. That was good for her. Of the remaining two attacking her the one directly on top of her wasn't able to do much more than claw feebly at her and the other didn't seem to be in much better shape.

Pushing the one off of her she kicked away from the second and managed to reach behind herself to grab the poker, which she somehow knew was there.

It was as covered in slime and leeches as everything else, but she was able to use both hands to hold onto it and hit the zombie until it stopped moving. The leeches had managed to deal with the other zombie, probably by eating their way into its brain and destroying its central nervous system from the inside. Some of them started oozing back to her while others seemed content to eat.

So her question of how the leeches would eat had been answered.

"Holy crap! Are you alright?"

Right, she'd forgotten about her rescuer.

"I'm alright," she laughed with relief when she recognized the man who had rescued her as fellow Bravo Team member, Richard Aiken. If he was alive that meant that she wasn't the only survivor and it was likely a matter of time before they were able to regroup, "You got here just in time. We've got to hurry and tell the others what's going on!"

Richard approached her warily, "Take it easy. I think you might be in shock."

"I'm not…" she trailed off when she looked down at herself. Relief gave way to terror as she saw the amount of damage the zombies had managed to do to her. Her arms were covered in bite marks, a few of them deep enough to have reached bone. There was blood, but not as much as there should have been, leeches and slime packing the injuries, sealing them shut. Beneath the layer of slime the leeches in her injuries were lining up, bringing themselves level with her skin, then as she watched, their bodies began to lighten in color, going from black to gray to almost pink before they vanished entirely. She poked at the area where they'd been and felt their slick bodies moving at the touch. So she'd been wrong that leeches were actively healing her injuries, they were just concealing them. Carefully she ran her finger around the edge of the injury, feeling the distinction between her skin and the camouflaged leeches. There was no pain from any of her injuries, possibly due to anesthetic properties of the leeches' saliva, but that didn't explain why she wasn't suffering from any symptoms of blood loss. Another thing it failed to explain was how she still had full use of her hands. Some of the bites to her arms and hands and been severe enough that they should have damaged nerves and tendons. It didn't make sense from a medical perspective unless there was some sort of regeneration taking place.

"We need to get out of here and get you to some place safe," Richard said as he started gingerly making his way towards her, taking care to step around the zombies as though he was worried that one of them might get up.

She considered warning him about the leeches, worried about what would happen if he stepped on them, but they didn't seem interested in him, and as she watched, she realized that they were actively moving to get out of his way, another behavior that didn't make sense. Leeches, as far as she knew, lacked enough sense of their surroundings to avoid something approaching them.

None of it made sense. There was something obvious she was missing, something that tied it all together.

The leeches remained focused on the zombies and that much at least made sense since most leeches were detritivores and they certainly hadn't been drinking her blood, otherwise she would have been dead. They had eaten the rats that Marcus had made her feed them, but the rats had already been dead. Marcus had said that zombies didn't work as hosts because the leeches ate them…no, overtook them too fast. He'd tried though, because the same virus that made the zombies was carried by the leeches.

"Richard! Don't come any closer!" she scrabbled away from, slipping in the slime and gore.

To his credit he froze, "What? Why?"

"I'm…I might be infected with…something," she looked at the bite marks on her arms, all of which were already nearly completely concealed by the leeches. They didn't hurt at all, just like how the leeches moving through her didn't hurt, just like how the zombies didn't stop attacking until they were dead. Was it because of the leeches or the virus that she couldn't feel pain? Whatever the cause, she didn't want to take any chances.

"What should I do?" Richard started approaching her again, more cautiously this time.

"Stay away from me," she said quickly, struggling to stay calm, "I think it's transferred though bites, but that probably means that all fluids are dangerous."

And she was absolutely covered in blood and slime.

"So we need to get you cleaned up as quickly as possible, otherwise…" he trailed off as the implications of what she'd said sank in.

"No," she shook her head, "I'm not going to end up like those things. At least I shouldn't. I just don't know if I'm contagious or not. We can't take any chances though, so don't touch me."

Mercifully he didn't ask how or why she knew so much, he simply took what she said at face value, probably because he was willing to take it as a given that she knew what she was talking about when it came to science and medicine. He also didn't seem to have noticed the leeches, though that probably shouldn't have been a surprise considering that they were less than an inch long and the ones on her were perfectly camouflaged.

"Alright," Richard took a few steps back as she got up, "So how are we going to get you cleaned up?"

Though she wanted to hurry up and find the others he did have a point, she was more or less a walking contamination hazard in the state she was in.

"I know where there's a washroom," she sighed, looking down at the floor to watch as the leeches left the zombies to return to her. Should she wait for them to get back to her or move on without them? The fact that it was something she was bothering to worry about was frightening, but if they were the only things holding her together then leaving any of them would be like leaving a part of her behind.

In the end she decided that it would be too suspicious if she lingered for too long. Richard was willing to accept that she might be infected without too much trouble, but she had the feeling that his response to discovering that she was literally crawling with parasites wouldn't be good.

"Past few minutes aside you seem to have had better luck than me," Richard said as he followed her, "You at least seem to know what's going on."

Right, she'd been looking for the others so that she could tell them what she'd learned. In the chaos with the zombies she'd forgotten all about it.

"Umbrella isn't just doing drug research and working on biotechnology, they've been dabbling in some pretty shady stuff for years. I don't know what it started out as, but almost from the beginning they've been making biological weapons," she started at the beginning, with the details she was most sure about. That would give her time to figure things out and decide how to tell him the rest of what she knew.

"Like anthrax and stuff like that?" Richard asked, "Why?"

"I don't know why they're doing it, but I wish it was just anthrax," she looked down at her arms, other than pink tinged slime there was no indication that she'd been bitten, "Those zombies we fought are some of it, but I think they're just a byproduct, what happens when a person gets infected with the virus they made. I found some notes and…files and it sounded like they were trying to make living biological weapons. They did a lot of animal experimentation and some of the things they made are way worse than zombies. I don't know much more than that, but I know if we can get back to Captain Wesker he can tell us more."

"Finding Wesker is a great idea," Richard agreed, "But why would he know more about this than the rest of us?"

"Because," Rebecca thought carefully, not wanting to say anything that would make Richard ask questions she didn't want to answer, "Some of the files I found made it clear that he has connections to Umbrella. Besides, when I first joined STARS he implied that he might be able to get me a job with Umbrella."

"Really?" he sounded equal parts skeptical and impressed, "What did the files say? What did Wesker say to you?"

Instead of giving a direct answer to either question she decided to combine the two, "That he was very good friends with one of the researchers there."

Richard laughed, "Is that why you've kept with us for so long? You figured it would be an easy way to get in with Umbrella? Me and the other guys always wondered why you didn't drop out after…"

She was glad he didn't finish that statement. There were several incidents he could have been referring to and none of them were accomplishments she wanted to be reminded of.

They reached the servants' quarters without encountering any zombies and there she made her way to the bathroom. Richard watched her, looking increasingly uncomfortable as she turned on the faucet and let the water in the bathtub run until it was warm.

"Do you think you'll be safe here?" he asked as he stood at the bathroom door.

"I should be," once the water was warm enough she put the stopper in the tub drain and let it start to fill.

"Then I'm going to look for the others while you clean up. You can wait for me here."

"Okay," she wasn't sure if it was because he thought she'd slow him down, if it was because she'd told him she was infected or if he was genuinely worried about her safety.

He left, closing the door behind him, which she locked for good measure. Then she stripped off her uniform, figuring she would wash it afterwards, and climbed into the tub.

Her intent had been to wash off as quickly as possible and then clean her uniform, but the water felt so good that she decided to take her time. Besides, she had agreed that she would wait for Richard so it wasn't like there was anything else for her to do.

She rubbed at her arms, not sure how to properly clean the injuries there since the leeches had filled them in. Even finding the injuries was difficult, between the leeches beneath her skin and the fact that she could somehow still feel the touch of her fingers against the areas where they had covered, actually finding them was a challenge. The fact that they were somehow transmitting sensory information to her nervous system didn't make sense. She was willing to accept that they could use pheromones to transmit information to each other, but how did they bring her in to the loop? It was obvious that they could, Marcus had been able to get around just fine despite being more leeches than himself if what he had implied was accurate.

There was something obvious that she was still missing.

Several leeches had left her to swim freely. She could feel their little bodies undulating through the water, except they weren't that little anymore. They'd at least doubled in size since hatching. Where were they getting the mass from? Some of them had eaten the zombies, but even if they'd brought back food for the others it probably wouldn't be enough to fuel that kind of growth.

One of the leeches was exploring, climbing up the edge of the tub. The porcelain was cold.

Somehow she was aware of what the leech felt, proof that it was communicating with the others and they were then sharing it with her.

Curiosity got the better of her.

She scooped several more leeches out of the water and placed them on the edge of the tub. The feeling of cold was more distinct, also the air was dry.

She lifted her hand out of the water and rested it on the rim of the tub. The sensations were the same as what she felt through the leeches.

Taking one of the leeches from the edge of the tub she carefully squeezed it. She could feel pressure, both through her fingers and the leech.

Releasing it she let it fall back into the water. It swam straight to her, not at all frightened by being handled and then dropped

Moving her hand through the water she watched as the leeches followed the motion, tumbling when they got caught in the wake. They swam around her fingers, sliding smoothly against her. More leeches joined in, an undulating black stream following the path of her hand through the water.

It was fascinating to watch and actually rather relaxing, seeing how they moved and feeling the water around them. The behavior didn't make any sense, but that was hardly exceptional considering everything else they could do that they shouldn't have been capable of.

When she stopped her hand the leeches bumped into it, squirming against her and each other in a disorienting mess of sensation. It tickled for lack of a better way of describing it.

As soon as she moved her hand the leeches again followed, bumping and nudging each other, circling in the current. She continued until she finally realized what was happening.

The leeches were playing.

Not only were they intelligent enough to act as a group to protect her, they were responsive to positive stimulus. More than that, because they transmitted sensation to her their play was working to ease the stress she felt. That was why she was able to relax despite the circumstances.

Or maybe she was reading too much into things. She went to turn the tap on to see if they would react to movement from a source other than her. The response was instantaneous. Before she even turned the water on they were gathering beneath the tap, anticipating what was about to happen.

She hesitated, the implications sinking in. Not only were they transmitting information to her, somehow she was transmitting to them as well.

Turning on the water caused them to scatter in all directions, she could feel them trying to swim against the current only to get pushed back. As soon as they were able to they went right back to swimming towards the falling water. There was no doubt about it, they were playing.

After this was all over she was still going to have to find a way to get rid of them, but maybe one that wouldn't kill them. They had helped save her life during the zombie attack and if they were as intelligent as they seemed to be then they would be worth studying. That seemed like a good idea, a way to salvage things for herself after quitting STARS. Besides, there had to be some good that could come from them, a medical use or something.

Leaning back in the bath she watched them, everything that she'd been through was catching up with her and exhaustion was setting in. Maybe if she closed her eyes just for a moment…

She didn't know how long she'd been asleep for. All she knew was that the tub was overflowing and there were leeches everywhere. There was a moment of panic that passed far more quickly than it should have considering the circumstances. That she'd been able to get used to them so fast was frightening, but so far they'd only helped and if they really were intelligent…

The leeches were still swimming around her, playing under the flow of the tap, washing over the sides of the tub and climbing back in to do it all over again. When she turned off the water they circled beneath the tap several times before swimming back to her. She could feel them pressing against her, rejoining the ones that had remained inside her.

She got out of the tub before all of the leeches had rejoined her. There was no way of knowing how long she'd been out for and the last thing she wanted was to be laying around naked in a bath full of leeches when Richard got back. Getting dressed wasn't an option though, at least not until she cleaned the blood and dirt from her uniform.

While she cleaned it as best as she was able, the leeches continued to return to her, lines of them slithering out of the tub and across the floor. If she paid attention she could feel them crawling up her legs, but they were easier to ignore than they had been. Even the itching was barely there. Either she'd gotten used to it or they'd all found where they wanted to stay and stopped moving around so much.

Once her clothing was as clean as it was going to get she spread it out to dry and waited. She'd been out long enough that Richard would probably be back any moment, bringing the others with him. They'd get out of the mansion, she'd quit and then she'd figure things out from there.

Waiting was difficult, but knowing that Richard was out there, getting help made things easier.

During the time she spent pacing the room the last of the leeches returned to her. That was good though, she didn't want them out and visible when Richard came back with help. Explaining them here and now would be too much, because then she'd need to tell them what had happened with director Marcus, yet another embarrassing thing she'd done, one more story about why she wasn't fit to be in STARS.

Looking back even she could see how stupid she'd been to follow him. None of her teammates would have ever gotten themselves into a situation like that. After everything was over though, when all of Umbrella's horrors were brought to light, then she could explain what had happened to her, because then it would be part of a larger picture instead of yet another accident caused by her inexperience. She wouldn't even have to tell anyone about Marcus himself, she could just say that she'd been pushed into a vat of leeches by a zombie. Everyone would believe that and it was honestly less embarrassing than the truth, an accident rather than active effort on her part.

Richard didn't come back.

Enough time had passed that she was starting to get worried.

Maybe he was in trouble.

As little as she liked the idea, she realized that she was going to have to set out on her own again.

At least she'd learned her lesson, only to attack zombies when they were alone and try and avoid them whenever possible.

This time when she started exploring the mansion there were fewer zombies and a lot more open doors. While she'd been asleep there had been a lot going on, but Richard hadn't come for her. She didn't know what that meant, nothing good she was sure.

She wandered the mansion and its outbuildings, seeing signs of people having been through the areas, but never encountering any of them. What she did encounter were the leeches she'd left behind with the zombies. They'd spread out and explored on their own and they'd smelled people, even seen the shadows and motion of their passing. She still had no idea how they were able to communicate the information to each other and pass it on to her, but she was thankful for it. Once everything was over she'd have the time to figure it out, but until then she was glad for any help she could get.

Following whatever it was the leeches could smell she went deeper into the mansion, discovering that very much like what she had found at the training facility, there was much more going on than there seemed. There were hidden rooms, secret passages and countless additions to the building that made no sense. Her first thought was to dismiss it as the whim of an eccentric millionaire, like the Winchester House, but she soon realized there was something far more ominous going on. The reach of Umbrella was greater than she had thought. Many of the additions had decidedly modern electronic locking mechanisms, and on occasion she found memos with the Umbrella logo on them. Research had been conducted in the mansion and the lack of leeches other than her own indicated that the outbreak here was unconnected to what she'd experienced earlier. Two separate containment breeches in such a short period of time wasn't something she was willing to attribute to random chance. There was something much bigger going on than she'd first suspected and Captain Wesker was in the middle of it, something she was growing increasingly sure of. His name had shown up too many times for it to be coincidence which meant the real question was, why had Bravo Team been sent in with so little information? It went past carelessness and straight into the realm of malice, especially if Marcus had been telling the truth about Captain Wesker attempting to kill him.

Where that put her and the others? What was the point of it all?

Again and again she was missing the bigger picture.

Hearing an animal growl down what was otherwise a promising stretch of hall she retreated to backtrack and hopefully find an alternate route. She knew she could deal with zombies, but she wasn't sure what else might be in the mansion and there had been plenty of things that she and Billy had encountered that she didn't want to even think about facing alone. The leeches, impossibly capable as they were, probably wouldn't be much help and she didn't want to test them. It was far better to play it safe, not because she was a coward, but because she was becoming increasingly aware of her own limitations.

Passing a window movement outside caught her attention. Someone was running around out there, too fast to be a zombie, but by the time she called out to them they were already gone.

She continued exploring, following halls and corridors, up and down the mansion until she was hopelessly lost. Maybe, if she wanted to the leeches would help her retrace her steps, but that wasn't what she needed to do. She had to find Richard or whoever it was that she'd seen and…she wasn't sure what other than that she'd figure it out when she found them.

The more she searched the less sense the layout of the mansion made. Floors and flights of stairs didn't line up. A chance wrong turn after a hall dead-ended brought her to a new part of the building. Not just an area that she hadn't explored, but a series of rooms that looked like they'd been added years after the original construction of the place. Labs and conference rooms with state of the art equipment, a hidden Umbrella research facility miles away from the city.

Somehow the leeches knew that the scent trail here was fresher than anywhere else. She was going in the right direction, but what was she heading into?

Hearing footsteps in the distance she broke into a run.

Whoever it was, they were heading away from her faster than she was able to keep up. Did she take the chance and call out? What choice did she have?

"Please! Wait!"

The footsteps stopped, then, "Jill? How did you get here?"

"No, I'm Rebecca!" she called back, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

She'd done it! Though she had no clue who it was she'd found she knew that they had to be in STARS because there was only one person they could be talking about, Jill Valentine, the only other woman in STARS, to whom she'd been constantly compared and found lacking. She didn't even care that they'd probably be disappointed to find out it was her.

"Rebecca Chambers? From Bravo Team?" they called back to her. By the sound of it they were heading towards her.

"Yes," she turned a corner and saw that she was right, whoever it was she had found was in a STARS uniform. Squinting she tried to figure out exactly who they were. His face was familiar, but she couldn't place a name to it. Someone from Alpha Team she thought, but because she was still so new and hadn't had much interaction with anyone outside of Bravo Team she wasn't too sure, "You have no idea how glad I am that I found you!"

He smiled at her, "Where are the others?"

"I…I don't know," she stammered, "We got separated early on. There were monsters and…"

She trailed off, realizing that now that she was saying it out loud it sounded really bad. Not just that she didn't know where any of the others were, but that she'd been on her own for so long and that monsters featured prominently in her story, no matter how she tried to tell it. Of course whoever it was that she'd found had to have encountered monsters as well, they couldn't have gotten this far without doing so.

"I know," he nodded grimly, "I'm Chris Redfield from Alpha Team. We got sent in to look for you and got attacked as well, probably by the same things. It was bad, but Jill, Barry, Wesker and myself managed to make it here. Then we got separated, so I guess the two of us are in the same situation."

"Yeah," she looked down at the floor, embarrassed that Chris was willing to compare their situations. One thing he said bothered her, "Captain Wesker is here?"

"Somewhere," Chris shook his head, "I met up with him once after we got separated and haven't seen him since."

"This isn't good," she didn't know what it meant, but she was certain that Wesker's being there was significant. He'd brought Alpha Team to the mansion and then abandoned them. Yes, he was the leader of the team, but he wouldn't have left them without reason. No, she was looking at it the wrong way, he wasn't there because he was with the team, the team had ended up there because he'd wanted to go to the mansion, "Why would the Captain bring you here?"

"To get away from the things attacking us," Chris replied, "Now follow me. I think there's something down here and it's important. Some computer files I found mentioned something called the Tyrant project and –"

"Wesker's here to take it!" she cut him off, "Director Marcus said that Wesker had him killed so he could take over the research. When the virus got out something must have happened and now Wesker is trying to cover things up or –"

"Wait," this time Chris cut her off, "What, who and what?"

"Director Marcus managed to modify the virus Umbrella was working with, he actually got it to work close to the way they wanted it to except Wesker killed him so he and his friend could take over the project," she started, realizing that things were finally starting to fall into place. She still didn't know why she'd been brought into STARS, but she knew why she'd been part of the team that had been sent out, why they'd been given so little information, the purpose was for them to fail, to be a distraction while Wesker did whatever it was that he was trying to do, "They must have made progress until something went wrong. The virus got out, well director Marcus let out the monsters, but there must have been an accident too and Wesker sent us in to deal with the consequences."

"Slow down," Chris put his hands on her shoulders, "Take a deep breath and tell me one thing at a time. Who is Marcus?"

"One of the founding members of Umbrella," she said quickly, not sure what that had to do with anything, "I found files about his work in the old training facility, diary entries too. He was working with something he called the progenitor virus. He managed to modify it into a new virus, the t-virus which they ended up using in the Tyrant project. I don't know what Umbrella's goal was, but they thought his research with the leeches was a dead end or something. Except it wasn't. They saved his life after Wesker shot him."

"Alright, Marcus was the one who made the monsters and let them out," Chris took a deep breath, "That at least explains where they came from and then the Captain found him and dealt with him. So things are more or less wrapped up."

"No," Rebecca pulled away, frustrated at how badly Chris was misunderstanding the events that had happened, "This is something new. I don't know what it is, but Wesker does, that's why we need to find him."

"I thought you said that you saw Wesker shoot Marcus," he said, looking at her incredulously, "Why didn't you ask him then?"

"That was ten years ago!" she stomped her foot in frustration, not caring that she must have looked like a little girl throwing a tantrum, "I didn't even know Wesker was here until I met up with you! He's here because of the Tyrant project and because he's working for Umbrella."

"Slow down again," Chris' expression grew concerned, "What happened ten years ago? That's how long Wesker was working with Umbrella?"

"No, he was working for them before that," she frowned, wishing that Chris would actually pay attention to what she was saying, "What happened ten years ago was him killing director Marcus."

"And how did you find out about this?" he asked, clearly troubled by the implications of what she was telling him, "Wesker's name came up in some of the files I found here, but they were all recent. You're trying to tell me that he's been with them for years, before STARS even. If that's the case…"

"Marcus told me," she blurted out before she could stop herself. There was no turning back now, she had to tell him the whole truth, "I ran into him in the training facility."

"I thought you said Wesker killed him," Chris looked at her suspiciously.

"No, Wesker shot him, but the leeches saved him," she said, only to realize how crazy it all sounded, "Don't worry, I can prove it."

She scratched at her wrists trying to pull one of the leeches free from where they were covering her injuries.

"Stop that," Chris grabbed her arms, "You're going to hurt yourself."

"No I'm not," she tried to break free from his grip, but he was too strong. All she could do was focus on the leeches squirming over her arms, hoping that they would understand that Chris wasn't a threat and wouldn't attack him, "I just want to show you one of the leeches."

"There aren't any leeches," Chris said quietly, "Just calm down. Whatever happened at the training facility is over and done with. Relax and sit down. I'm going to see what's down here and then we can go. If the Captain really is working for Umbrella there should be proof down here. All you need to do is wait for me to get back."

"You think I'm crazy," she accused, fighting back tears.

"No," Chris said gently, still refusing to let go, "I think you've been through a lot and you need time to calm down. None of us could have anticipated any of this and you honestly shouldn't have been sent out in the first place. I get it that you blame Wesker for what happened to your team and I'm ready to believe that he's working for Umbrella. For now you just need to relax and we can sort everything else out later."

Then he let go of her wrists.

There was no sense in trying to argue with him or try and prove that she wasn't crazy. Luck alone had prevented the leeches from biting him and she wasn't about to tempt fate again in case he grabbed her again, "Fine, after this is over I'll prove I'm not crazy, but for now I'm sticking with you. I have as much a right to know what's going on as anyone."

He seemed willing to accept that and let her follow him to the elevator without comment. They rode down to yet another basement floor, arriving at an airlock style door. Several pipes had burst, filling the hall with a fine mist, obscuring the warning signs covering the walls. It took several seconds for the locking mechanism of the door to disengage and when it opened they were greeted by a baffling sight, rows and rows of computer monitors and several enormous tubes that spanned from the floor to the ceiling. They were made of clear glass, but the liquid inside them was thick and cloudy, obscuring whatever shadowy things were floating in them.

Past all that was a man frantically typing away at a computer terminal. Silhouetted by the light from the monitor it was impossible for her to tell who it was until they were closer. She had been right.

"Wesker," Chris' voice was neutral, though Rebecca could sense an undertone of distrust.

"So you've come," Wesker didn't even look up from what he was doing, "Chris, you make me proud. Of course you are one of my men."

Chris let out a dismissive snort, "Thanks."

Rebecca was about to cut in, tell Wesker that she knew the truth, but before she could speak he turned around and pointed his gun at her.

She gasped, Chris froze. Of all the things she had imagined happening this wasn't one of them.

"Since when Wesker?" Chris demanded.

Wesker let his aim drift over to Chris, likely having decided that she was unarmed and not threat at all, "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

"Since when have they been slipping you a paycheck?"

Rebecca was amazed, he seemed less concerned about the gun aimed at him than Wesker's betrayal. At least it meant that he believed her about Wesker working for Umbrella.

"I think you're a bit confused," Wesker stepped in closer, leaving Chris with no space to react. Though it was impossible to see the Captain's eyes through his sunglasses Rebecca got the distinct impression that he was looking past Chris to her as he continued, "I've always been with Umbrella. STARS were Umbrella's, no, rather my, little piggies. The Tyrant virus leaked, polluting this whole place and unfortunately I had to give up my lovely members of STARS."

"You killed them with your own dirty hands," Chris raised an accusing finger, "You son of a bitch!"

"No," Rebecca felt no pleasure at learning that she had been completely right, only a growing sense of horror, and paradoxically, relief. She was honestly relieved that things had gone the way they had. If the Tyrant virus hadn't been released she would have continued working for STARS and Wesker might have made good on his promise to get her a job with Umbrella. Who knew what sort of project she might have been assigned to and how long it would have taken her to figure out what was going on? It was possible that it might have taken her years to learn the truth, that rather than helping people with the research she was doing, she helping make monsters. And what would have happened when she learned the truth? Would fear and guilt keep her silent or would Wesker kill her just like he had director Marcus, just like the members of Bravo and Alpha Team, like he was about to do with Chris?

"Oh yes dear," Wesker's expression was unreadable, "Just like this."

Without warning he turned away from Chris and for the third time since her ordeal had started, she was shot.

The impact knocked her to the floor. There was no pain, just pressure and the inability to breathe. Had her Kevlar vest protected her?

No, no it hadn't.

It was a strange thing, to feel herself bleeding internally. He'd shot her high in the chest, just off center. There were a lot of things he could have hit there, very important things. A lung, one of the major blood vessels leading to her heart, her heart itself.

Wesker was still talking, but his voice was distant. She tried to watch him, to see what he would do next, but it was hard to see anything. Her vision was starting to blur.

The leeches were frantically swarming to her chest, stopping the bleeding, but that wouldn't be enough. The blood that was already there, whatever was damaged had to be dealt with as well. If her lungs couldn't expand, if blood wasn't making it from her heart to the rest of her body…

There was only so much that they could do.

They still tried though, she could feel more and more of them filling her chest, frantically trying to seal the damage and clean up.

Something was happening around her, a lot of commotion and movement, but she hardly noticed it, all her attention was on the leeches and struggling to breathe. Through it all there was no pain, just pressure and the horrible sliding feeling of the leeches.

Any moment now she would pass out from blood loss or lack of oxygen and that would be the end. Even if Chris made it to her before she bled out there wouldn't be time to get her to anyone who could help. She was going to die and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Not even the leeches. As good as they had done hiding the bites on her arms there was no way they could repair a damaged organ in a way it could function.

"Rebecca!"

Someone was picking lifting her, propping her up. The leeches shifted inside her.

"Chris," she gasped, amazed that she was able to speak. Maybe the way he'd lifted her had caused the leeches to shift enough to let her lungs work again. She could still feel the leeches sitting heavily in her chest. Somehow they must have stopped the internal bleeding and then managed to get rid of the blood pressing on her organs by drinking it. She could tell because they were sharing the meal with the others. Breathing, now that she could manage it, was uncomfortable, but it was possible, the leeches moving to let her lungs expand. Her chest was packed with them. They didn't repair or heal wounds, they just filled them.

"Good thing you were wearing your bulletproof vest," he said, smiling at her. Before she could attempt to correct him, that Wesker had taken care to shoot above it, he continued, "There's nothing left for us to do here. Let's get moving."

She looked past him and saw Wesker laying prone on the floor. A distance away was something enormous and horrifically malformed. Whatever it was that had happened she didn't want to know the details, "Okay."

All that mattered was that Wesker was dead and it was over. STARS was over, no need to worry about telling anyone she was quitting.

If Chris noticed her fleeting smile he didn't comment, he just helped her to her feet and guided her out of the room.

She wasn't paying attention to where they were going or anything else, all she could focus on was the weight in her chest. It was hard to breathe. All she could feel was the leeches squirming, moving back and forth, sharing the meal they'd had. They'd drank her blood, to save her, but still, what if they developed a taste for it?

Keeping her breaths short and shallow helped ease the discomfort. The leeches didn't like being compressed when her diaphragm expanded to pull air into her lungs. It was their being compressed that was uncomfortable, not the act of breathing itself. Why should she care about their comfort? All they'd done was save her life.

Chris brought her to the elevator and told her to wait, that he had to take care of one more thing.

She nodded, listening as the sound of his footsteps vanished into the distance. Then she listened to the gurgling sounds of her own breathing and the faint sliding sensation in her chest as the leeches moved. She couldn't feel her heart beating, but she had lost a lot of blood. Maybe she was going into shock.

She tried to check her pulse but there were too many leeches on her arms, all she could feel was their moving. Her neck then, no leeches there.

Nothing.

She licked her lips, realizing that she could taste blood, her own blood. One of her lungs must have been damaged then. A lung and who knew what else.

She coughed.

Some blood and a fat leech came up and landed on the floor next to her. It was big, almost the size of her thumb. When it reared up she could see its mouth and hooked teeth.

She picked it up and held it in the palm of her hand. Proof that she wasn't crazy, if she wanted to show it to anyone.

Did she want to?

She wasn't sure.

Just in case she put the leech into one of her pockets. It pulled at the fabric with its teeth, curious about its surroundings. It could smell the others, sense them, but it was apart from them. Cautious but unafraid. The leech was better off than her then.

Footsteps, this time two sets. She looked up.

Chris was back and there was a woman with him, the unmistakable Jill Valentine.

Jill looked at her, eyes asking an unspoken question and Rebecca looked away.

She couldn't feel her heart beating, just leeches.

They were infected with the t-virus.

The t-virus had made the zombies.

The leeches couldn't be introduced to an infected host, they overtook it too fast. They ate it too fast.

An uninfected host wouldn't stay that way for long though, would it? Not with the leeches carrying the virus. Once it died they'd start eating, but in those few hours before death they'd have time to finish imprinting on the host. They could pick up on chemical signals in the host's blood, maybe even electrical signals in the brain. It would allow them to know things that they shouldn't, anticipate what the host was about to do.

She followed Chris and Jill down the hall to a different elevator, glancing at them out of the corner of her eye from time to time.

She'd seen the zombies mauling dead bodies. They'd attacked her and tried to eat her even while the leeches ate them. That she felt no desire to attack her rescuers meant nothing, she wasn't really a zombie, was she? Her leeches had killed the zombie attacking her by destroying its central nervous system. The leeches were detritivores after all, they preferred eating dead things. There was no reason that they'd be hungry. They already had something dead to eat.

Carefully she ran her fingers along her arm, searching for where the leeches had filled in the bites. It was hard to find the edges of the injuries, not just because the skin around it was numb, but because the wounds were larger than they'd been.

This elevator took them to the surface.

It was day, the sun was bright. It dried out the slime coating the leeches on her arms, leaving it a sticky film. They wanted to burrow away from it and hide, but she endured the discomfort, working out a compromise of sorts.

She stopped trying to breathe.

It was over and she was safe.

"I quit."

But Chris and Jill didn't hear. Her words had been too quiet and they were focused on the helicopter circling overhead.

She was safe, but she hadn't really made it through her ordeal, had she?

The leeches squirmed. They wanted to get away from the light.

Looking at her arms, she could see them twitching slightly as they rolled over, allowing new leeches to take their place. They were good at working together, very good. Enough so that she hadn't realized the extent of their cooperation. They'd tricked her into thinking that she was fine.

A signal flare went off, the helicopter circled lower.

She stepped back into the shade to wait.

Taking the leech out of her pocket she put it on her arm.

There was no pain when it bit her and started to burrow, its color changing to match that of her skin. Everything she felt was what the leech felt because…

Pulling the leech away before it finished she looked at the divot it had left in her arm.

The helicopter landed and she put the leech back, watching as it vanished. She ran her finger along were the leech was. Where the leech was she could feel the contact, around it was numb. The same went for her wrists, everywhere there were leeches she could feel things normally. Where they weren't there was nothing.

Chris offered her a hand getting onto the helicopter, but she ignored him, struggling to climb in on her own. Jill flowed afterwards, sitting down next to Chris.

Rebecca collapsed on the floor.

She was crying, or sobbing at least. She wasn't sure if there were any actual tears. Chris and Jill probably thought it was because she was weak or crazy, or it was survivor's because the rest of her team was dead. If they thought it was the last reason they were mostly right.

Her entire team was dead, herself included. She'd died in the bathtub, waiting for help that never came.

All that was left were the leeches, slowly eating away at what was left.


	13. Consequences

**Summary:** A direct continuation of the earlier chapter 'Voyeur'. This installment from Jill's point of view.

 **Characters:** Jill Valentine, Albert Wesker, Chris Redfield

 **Notes:** I guess I just didn't want to leave things hanging and I really wanted to write something featuring Uroboros more prominently.

o0o

Jill found Wesker exactly where she'd suspected he'd be, sitting in the main security office of the facility, watching the end of the world. He looked at her and smiled one of his arrogant, knowing smiles before immediately turning back to the screens in front of him. Her fingers twitched as she imagined punching him in the face, breaking his sunglasses across the bridge of his nose, feeling bone and cartilage shatter under the force of the impact. Red eyes would go wide as he staggered back from pain and shock. It was something she'd imagined doing thousands of times, each time the thought growing more vivid and detailed. Little things like that helped keep her sane. She was a prisoner in her own body, but she still had her own mind and she'd learned to push the limits of what she was free to do. That was how she'd managed what she'd just done, repeating tasks she'd done countless times before, taking advantage of the fact that without direct orders she largely functioned on autopilot.

She stared at Wesker, looking for some subtle tell that he knew what she'd done, but he gave her nothing. He didn't even bother turning around as he motioned for her to look at the scene playing out on the computer monitors.

The only conclusion she could come to was that he suspected nothing, that she'd been his puppet for so long that he'd started to lose interest in her. He must have thought she'd stopped fighting him, which was a mistake. She fought him constantly in a hundred little ways too small for him to see. What she'd just done was the culmination of it all. Hopefully it would be enough. Soon she would find out, but until then all she could do was watch and wait. It was all she could do anymore, watch and wait and think.

The majini were all dying. One by one they started screaming and tearing at themselves, very different than what had happened with human test subjects. She hadn't expected that to happen, but Wesker didn't seem surprised, so maybe he had. Maybe he'd known that the plaga parasites would try to escape from their hosts as Uroboros took hold, tearing their way free and writhing across the ground, away from the ruined bodies, some of which were still twitching as black, writhing tendrils poured from every orifice. Most of the bodies died, but some managed to slither away and hide in the shadows.

"Interesting." Wesker glanced up from the screen to give her a knowing smile. Was he fishing for a response from her? He'd have to work to get one.

But he didn't ask for her opinion on what she'd just seen or press her for any input. He did that from time to time, asking her questions he already knew the answer to, just to hear her agree with him. All he did was laugh softly, sadly? No, she was reading too much into things, trying to attribute some human motivations to the monster.

"Go fetch Chris and bring him up to the roof. I want him with us to watch the sunset."

It was the moment she'd been waiting for.

"No!" she spat in his face as she tore the device that controlled the constant, slow drip of P30 flowing to keep her under control from her body. She threw it in his face and, while he was still reeling from shock at her suddenly breaking free of his control, she pivoted gracefully to kick him in the side of the head.

His head snapped back. She heard his teeth click together and there was a spray of blood. Her timing had been absolutely perfect, she'd gotten him just as he was about to say something and he'd bitten off the tip of his tongue. Perfect.

For the first time she saw fear in his red eyes, it faded quickly as he recovered from her attack, standing up, ready to take her, but it wasn't going to be an easy fight for him. She might have broken free of his control, but there was still enough of the P30 left in her system to give her heightened strength and reflexes. It wouldn't be a fair fight, it wouldn't be an even fight, but it would be less one sided than Wesker anticipated. The first strike came, almost too fast for the human eye to follow, but she knew his style from the times he'd forced her to spar with him. She could dodge it and

"Jill? Are you listening?" Wesker's voice was full of mocking concern as he stood up and repeated his order, "Go get Chris. Bring him to the roof."

Fantasizing about what she'd do if she broke free of his control had helped keep her sane, though there were times if it was just another form of madness. In her mind she'd fought him countless times, getting killed by him just as often as she managed to kill him. Lately, even in her mind she'd been losing more and more often.

She nodded, wordlessly turning and walking away from him. It was the moment she'd been waiting for, the moment she'd been dreading. Behind her he could hear Wesker going off in the opposite direction, maybe he was going to the roof early to practice whatever gloating speech he planned to give. Giving up on the imagined fight, trying to ignore the heavy feeling of the P30 pump, still firmly lodged in her chest, she did as told. It didn't matter, not this time at least, because it was a fight she'd already lost. She'd hesitated and lost the element of surprise, next time she'd have to be quicker. She could push him off the roof, loosen Chris' bindings so that he could help…

Before going into the cell she peered in through the slot in the door. Chris was still bound with the same sort of straps and chains that the researchers had used to restrain the monsters whose making she'd overseen. None of the specimens had broken free, at least not without help. There had been two instances where she hadn't properly secured subjects and they'd escaped after mutating. After the second incident, the one where the resulting monster had managed to escape through a door that had been carelessly left open and went on a rampage that resulted in the deaths of nearly half a dozen researchers and twice as many majini, Wesker had caught on to what she was doing. After she'd bound Chris he'd tested the restraints himself and found everything to be satisfactory.

Chris was sitting in the corner of the cell, staring at the door. He stood up when she opened it, straining against his restraints, but he made no move to escape. Instead he glared at her. She'd never imagined anyone looking at her with such utter hatred and contempt, let alone Chris. The most Wesker managed was condescension and wry amusement, nothing he'd done or made her do left her feeling the way Chris' look did. She wanted to cry, to scream, to beg for forgiveness. What she did was walk across the cell and roughly shove Chris towards the door.

He went with minimal resistance. The begging and accusations were over, he'd already accepted her betrayal.

Except she couldn't help but notice he was slick with sweat and breathing heavily. It being from his earlier struggles was a believable enough explanation, but she couldn't help but notice the red lines of infection running up and down his arm where she'd injected him in her desperate attempt to protect him. In her hurry she hadn't properly sterilized anything so there was no telling what it might be. A mundane infection had the potential to be just as deadly as Uroboros. She should have thought of that earlier, though it might not have been too late. Wesker was unpredictable, he might want to keep Chris alive, in which case he would allow her to treat him. That would have to be what she hoped for, a small act of mercy from Wesker, unlikely, but not impossible. He'd done far stranger things in the past.

When they finally arrived Wesker was already there, as was Excella. That was a surprise as recently the partnership between the two of them had become increasingly strained. Each had their own goals which were growing increasingly at odds.

Excella was at Wesker's side, looking simultaneously arrogant and terrified. When she noticed Jill was staring at her she took a step back. Jill smiled, Excella hated her and the feeling was mutual. On several occasions she'd pushed too far, trying to manipulate Jill into doing things that went against Wesker's orders. Each time she'd ignored Excella, not by choice, but because of how careful Wesker's control of her had been. During Excella's last attempt, less than a month ago, she'd finally stepped over the line and slapped Jill across the face, forgetting that she was able to defend herself. Though she was under direct orders not to kill the heiress, that didn't keep her from grabbing her and jacking her up against the wall, hands at her throat. Excella had been far more careful after that.

Turning her attention from Excella, Jill stared at Wesker, waiting for orders while imagining what she'd need to do to shove him off the roof. He was too far away from the edge right now so she'd have to figure out a way to walk him closer.

Wesker took off his sunglasses and turned his back to her and Chris. They both tensed, likely thinking the exact same thing, just a few meters more…

Excella turned as well, albeit hesitantly, fully aware that Jill could close the distance between the two of them in an instant, pick her up and throw her off the roof with little to no effort. Jill didn't often fantasize about killing Excella, but if the opportunity were to present itself she'd take it.

It was still at least an hour until the sunset, but the sky was dark, a dull red haze blurring the horizon. It was over. She'd known it was going to happen, that she'd be helpless to do anything, but actually seeing it, being there for the end of the world and only being able to watch was too much for her to wrap her mind around. She was seeing it, but it didn't register. She turned to look at Chris and he shoved away from her, slight tremors running through his body. That registered, that was more real than the end of the world. Maybe it was the light, maybe it was burst blood vessels, but Chris' eyes had a pinkish tint to them.

Jill's eyes were watering from the dust.

Excella coughed loudly.

"What did you do?" Chris demanded, his voice hoarse from the earlier shouting.

"It's simple," Wesker laughed, "I've won."

Next to him Excella managed a weak chuckle that cut off abruptly when he casually pushed her away.

She recovered gracelessly, standing up straighter than before, "What are _we_ doing now?"

Jill noted the emphasis she put on we, as did Wesker.

"We're waiting," he sighed as though disgusted by having to state the obvious.

"Really?" Chris spat, "No big dramatic speech?"

"There's no need," Wesker turned to face him, red eyes bright in the gloom, "Uroboros will sweep the globe, leaving behind only those worthy of the power it offers."

Excella coughed loudly, interrupting him.

The look he gave her was one of mocking pity, "And it seems that you, my dear, have been found wanting."

"Brutto bastardo!" Excella snarled, slapping him across the face and storming back inside, "Goditela finchè puoi!"

Wesker watched her go, shaking his head sadly, "A pity."

He didn't specify whether he meant her being unworthy, or her leaving, he didn't need to.

Chris shook his head and took another step towards Wesker.

The tremors were getting worse.

Jill followed, caught in a struggle she had no hope of winning. She wanted to reach out, hold him steady, but she couldn't will herself to do even that, couldn't trust herself to try for fear of what would happen. Her eyes fell to his arm, faint shadows had joined the red streaks there. She'd failed, or maybe she'd made things worse. With all Wesker had done to her there was no telling what was in her blood.

Looking Chris up and down Wesker smiled, "Jill, release him. There's no need to keep Chris restrained like that, not when there's nothing left he can do."

Jill did as told, unfastening Chris' bindings. As soon as he was freed she took a step back, not sure what he might do. He might try and attack Wesker, or he might got for her because she was closer and he didn't know. Instead he stood there, rubbing at his wrists. There were angry, red welts around them from his earlier struggles to free himself.

Chris' eyes flickered from Wesker to the distant haze, confusion and anger fighting as he struggled to piece together what was happening, that there was nothing left he could do, that anyone could do.

Stopping Wesker, saving Chris, it had all been futile and now all there was left was waiting.

"If that's Uroboros," Chris tilted his head towards the spreading cloud, "What did you inject me with?"

Wesker's eyes went wide with surprise and Jill gritted her teeth. Once Wesker realized what had happened he'd punish her for it and with Chris standing right there it was far too easy to imagine what the punishment would be.

"Chris," the corner of Wesker's mouth twitched in what might have been the smallest of smiles, "I'm afraid you're faring no better than Excella, you're clearly delirious. I never injected you with anything."

"You had her," Chris glared at Jill, "Come and…"

He trailed off when he caught her look of horror.

"Really?" Wesker chuckled, giving Jill a look that chilled her to the bone as he took a small device from his pocket. It was the remote control he used when he felt she needed an extra dose of P30, "Jill, did you inject Chris with something?"

The chemical burned in her veins, but it was a feeling she was used to.

"Yes."

Her voice was flat, dead.

"Really?" Wesker's look of surprise was too exaggerated to be real. He know, somehow he'd known all along and had been waiting for this moment. His next question made it obvious, "What was the point of it?"

Not what had she injected him with but why had she done it. He knew what she'd done all along and had let things go as far as they had because it amused him. And it left her with only one answer.

"To try and inoculate him against Uroboros," she managed to sound defiant rather than defeated, hoping that Chris would understand.

"Really?" Wesker's patronizing smile grew wider. He pressed the button on the remote again, "Why?"

"Because you ordered me to keep him alive and if I didn't at least try the virus would kill him," she spoke through clenched teeth. Each word was a struggle. It was what she'd been holding onto since he'd forced her to capture Chris, that he'd ordered her to keep him safe. The vague statement had been enough for her to twist into something she was able to use for her own ends and now she threw it back at him in a final act of defiance, certain that he was about to order her to kill Chris. She'd fight against it though with everything she had left. She'd already managed to bring her hands half way up her chest, fingers shaking inches from the P30 pump.

"I'm impressed. I never thought that you were actually paying attention to anything I'd said, all the little tasks I had you do," he pressed the button again.

He'd never given her so much in such a short period of time. He must have realized how she'd been fighting it, but this was too much. With a choked scream she fell to the ground, writhing as the P30 coursed through her.

What followed was like something out of a dream, the sort of fantasy she hadn't allowed herself for a very long time.

"Leave her alone!" Chris charged past her and tackled Wesker to the ground. Wesker had dragged things out for too long and Chris had managed to make the connection between the remote control and her response.

Chris had his hands on Wesker's throat, and for a moment red eyes went wide in panic, just as she'd hoped they would when the moment finally came. Unfortunately it passed too quickly. Despite being pinned to the ground Wesker regained his composure, calmly reaching up to grab Chris' face. Chris let go with one hand to try and push Wesker's hand away. Like that the fight turned and Wesker was the one with the advantage. He pried Chris' fingers away from his throat and stood up without loosening his grip on Chris' face.

Jill was certain that he would follow up by snapping Chris' neck, but instead he shifted his grip slightly and hooked a thumb into Chris' eye and squeezed. Chris screamed in rage and pain as dark blood began to flow down his face.

Wesker let go and flicked his hand, sending droplets of blood and matter flying.

"You're fortunate enough to be witnessing the birth of a new world, yet you still cling to such pathetic sentimentality…" Wesker started, then trailed off when he saw that Chris was still standing.

Jill could only watch as the dream turned sour. Just like the way her fantasies of breaking free of Wesker's control always ended bitterly, with the realization that there was nothing she could do, that she was still a helpless captive, reality intruded on this as well. Chris was standing, a hand clamped over his eye, which did nothing to stop the blood oozing down his face. A vein in his forehead twitched, a dark shadow beneath his skin. There were more, dark lines along his arms and face. She'd failed. It was only a matter of time before he ended up in the same state as countless test subjects.

"Shut up!" Chris snapped, lunging forward.

Wesker dodged the clumsy attack effortlessly, "I'm offering humanity a gift, salvation."

"I don't want it, humanity doesn't need it!" Chris swung at him again, the red lines up and down his arms opening up into fine rents, something too dark to be blood welling up within. The blow missed, but blood spattered against Wesker's face.

Grimacing in disgust Wesker took a step backwards, "Is this really how you want to spend your last few moments of sentience Chris? Is this what you want Jill to remember about you? That you died in an utterly futile gesture of defiance?"

Something dark and sticky looking that wasn't blood was welling up in the mess on Chris' face. He tried to wipe it away, but the ropey strands held fast. More worked their way out of the splits in his arms and Jill could see them squirming beneath his shirt as well. Any minute he would fall apart, collapse in on himself, or explode outward in a mass of squirming tentacles.

Instead he took another swing at Wesker and the fight continued, not that it was much of a fight. Chris was barely able to stand and Wesker was too fast for him. How it would end was obvious, Wesker was playing with him, waiting for him to finally succumb to Uroboros.

Except the fight dragged on. Wesker's arrogance never faltered, even as Chris seemed to find his second wind, his strikes growing more confident. Jill watched it play out, helpless to interfere, afraid to do anything lest Wesker remember that she was there.

The first sign that things weren't as they seemed was when Wesker finally lost patience and struck Chris, an open palmed slam straight to the center of Chris' chest. Chris staggered back, shook himself and when Wesker came forward for a second strike, clearly intending to finish him off, Chris was ready and batted his hand away.

The two of them seemed equally surprised by the situation, Wesker breaking distance as Chris slowly smiled.

"Maybe…it isn't so bad," Chris panted, looking at his hands, clenching and unclenching them as black tendrils squirmed across them, "I can use this."

Wesker smiled, a genuine, warm smile, easily one of the most terrifying things Jill had seen during her time as his captive, "Really?"

Then he laughed and turned to Jill giving her an equally radiant smile, "You should be proud of yourself, you managed to save your lover. It's clearly not a success, but it's better than what would have happened otherwise."

Chris nodded, his smile growing predatory, "Last time you had an advantage, I don't think that's the case anymore."

This time Wesker wasn't able to dodge in time, the impact actually lifting him off his feet. He fell and rolled out of the way, barely managing to avoid Chris' follow up.

"Jill," Wesker's earlier mirth was gone, "Keep Chris occupied until he comes to his senses, if he doesn't kill him and bring the body inside for study."

There was enough P30 in her system that she acted without hesitation, rising to her feet and rushing Chris. He let each punch and kick land, shrugging them off until an opening presented itself. That was when he grabbed her and slammed her down against the rooftop hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Gasping, she struggled feebly as he drew his hand back, fingers curling claw like. He swung, his nails cutting through cloth and flesh alike, digging in and…pulling the P30 pump free.

He crushed the thing and tossed it aside, "Jill?"

Her vision cleared, though as her eyes came into focus she wished it hadn't. Chris was staring down at her, his remaining eye was a pool of red streaked with black lines that seemed to move across its surface. When he blinked she could see movement beneath his eyelid. She couldn't look away though, because the rest of his face was worse, black worm like things squirming out of the hole where his other eye should have been.

"Jill?" He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard enough that she cried out. Chris tightened his grip, the black tendrils that had burst through his arms squirming against her, "Are you alright?"

She nodded and tried to push him away, but he refused to let go so she closed her eyes instead, "Chris…I couldn't control my actions, but oh god…I was still aware. Forgive me…"

"It was Wesker's fault," he said quickly, "We'll kill him."

"Chris…" she started to say that it was pointless, that everything was over, but when she opened her eyes she saw the look on his face. There was no point in arguing with him, no point in stating the obvious, but at least it was something they could do, "Alright."

Chris smiled, not the smile she remembered from before, but a smile none the less. It wasn't what she'd hoped for, what she'd dreamed of, but it was real and maybe that was what mattered.


	14. Animal Companions

**Summary:** An AU set post Resident Evil 4. Leon was never able to get rid of the plaga and now he has to live with an unwanted pet.

 **Characters:** Leon Kennedy, the plaga if you want to count it as a character

 **Notes:** RE4 was a game I really wanted to write something for, but couldn't figure out what to do. The obvious choice was simply having Leon fail, which I might still write a fic about, but I didn't want to go with the obvious since that wouldn't be any fun.

o0o

The storm that had been growing all day had finally broke. Leon restlessly paced through his small apartment, listening to the rain against the windows and wincing every time lightning lit up the sky. The plaga didn't like storms. Thunder made it restless and each flash of lightning brought with it a stab of fear. It surprised him how good the thing's memory was, that it could even remember things at all.

Over the months that had followed his saving Ashley and thwarting Saddler's plans he'd figured out that lightning reminded the plaga of the blue light from the machine that was supposed to have killed it, would have killed it if not for the lights flickering and dying seconds after he was strapped in. The machine had lost power, something vital had broken and nothing he and Ashley had tried had been able to fix it. At least he'd had the sense to get her to go in first, since she'd been infected longer and he'd just taken the medication that Luis had given him, pills that were supposed to suppress the plaga's growth and influence over him. So at least Ashely was safe and he'd be able to manage until their escape. He'd figured that after everything was over technicians would be sent in, get the device working again and that would be the end of it. The island facility being rigged to blow had put an end to that optimism. With the press of a button Ada had set the charges off, ruining everything in the same smiling way she always did.

At the time he'd had some of the medication left and figured that it would last until someone figured out how to safely kill the plaga.

Of course it hadn't worked out that way. Surgery had been out of the question, the plaga was too aggressive and whatever it was doing to his body meant that most sedatives didn't work. Any poisons that would kill it would have killed him as well, so that wasn't an option either. Instead the pills Luis had given him had been analyzed and, once their active ingredients were determined, he was put on a course of treatment until Luis' methods for safely killing plagas without killing the host could be determined.

The thing was, inhibiting the plaga's growth wasn't the same as stopping it entirely and by the time meaningful progress had been made the plaga had made progress of its own, working its way into his nervous system to a degree where it was hard to tell what was and wasn't part of it. All that could be determined was that it probably hadn't integrated itself into his brain, though there were some suspect areas near his brainstem. At that point treatment probably would have left him paralyzed at best. The medication worked though, and as long as he continued taking it he would be safe.

And so living with the plaga became the same as living with any chronic condition, as long as he took his meds it would be fine, except after a while it stopped working that way.

It happened so slowly that he hardly realized it was happening at first. Numbness in his hands, loss of grip strength, little tremors were the most obvious symptoms, but there was also a general feeling of sluggishness, times when it didn't feel like his body was as responsive as it should have been. He didn't realize it was actually a problem until he found himself having to set aside more and more time for what should have been simple tasks, that and needing to buy a new set of dishes for a third time to replace all the ones he'd dropped. His first thought, when he finally realized that something was wrong, was that it the plaga's fault and he was mostly right about that. A series of tests run by the doctors who'd been treating him had revealed that the situation was either better or worse that he'd thought. The plaga had continued to grow and the medication had continued to keep it dormant, unable to act on its own. As it replaced more and more of his nervous system it became less and less functional. His brain was still fine, but everything else was about as much plaga as it was him and with the plaga dormant, nothing was working quite the way it should have. So the plaga was the source of the trouble, but it wasn't through active effort on the parasite's part.

He'd gone home from that meeting with a lot to think about and after a week he decided to see what would happen if, without telling anyone, he went off his meds. For three days there was no improvement, no change at all until the last of the medication left his system. After that the difference was remarkable. The numbness vanished and he was actually able to do things again. Surprisingly, the plaga wasn't a problem. It was there, he could feel it, but it didn't try anything. That much made sense, he supposed, without a dominant form plaga to influence it the parasite was simply there, waiting. It was something he could live with.

And it was easy.

Or it was mostly easy.

He had to keep track of what he was doing to make sure he didn't forget little things like taking out the trash and cleaning up the apartment because the plaga left him apathetic towards a lot of things. It wanted to rest during the day and grew more active at night which tended to keep him awake, so lack of sleep probably explained why he got so little done. It also probably explained why the infested villagers had lived in squalor, a combination of not caring and not having the energy to act.

Cleaning was important, especially keeping the refrigerator clean. The plaga didn't crave raw meat or anything like that, which had worked to make him complacent. The problem was that it didn't care if food was spoiled and he had made the unpleasant discovery that it seemed to like rotten fruit and vegetables enough that it would urge him to eat things that he'd normally throw out. Since he couldn't tell by smell if something was bad or not because of the plaga messing with his senses most of what he threw out versus what he ate was guess work. He figured that about half the time he won and half the time the plaga won, it all depended on how hungry he was when cleaning the fridge and how interesting the plaga thought what he was throwing out was.

Sour milk was another of its favorites and he had to take care every time he took the carton out of the fridge. If he didn't pay attention the plaga would distract him so that he'd leave it out to spoil before he drank it.

He also had to watch his temper, something he realized after the couple in the apartment next to his started a particularly loud argument sometime after midnight. The first thought to enter his head was to kill them both so he could try and sleep. He'd actually gotten out of bed and started looking for his gun. That was probably the only thing that prevented the disaster, that he was thinking logically enough to want to use a gun rather than going over and beating them both to death. The time it took him to get a gun and load it was enough time for him to realize what he was doing. Instead of killing his neighbors he took a dose of the medicine and went back to bed. And stayed in bed for a full day and a half, unable to move afterwards, an unpleasant, but worthwhile tradeoff.

There had been a few other close calls since then and he'd responded in the same way, taking medication to render the plaga dormant.

From situations like that both he and it had learned. It didn't try anything that would make him resort to taking the medication and he tried to avoid situations where there would be a risk of it acting out.

Despite how easy it was to ignore most of the time, it did have a mind of its own and its own set of likes and dislikes. Bright lights and certain noises agitated it to the point where if he didn't take measures to mitigate the situation it would start thrashing and leave him coughing up blood for hours afterwards. And that was a best case scenario, there were times it simply reacted which usually meant that he'd spend the next day fixing or replacing whatever it drove him to break, like the television.

Other times the most random little things would fill him with an inexplicable sense of distress.

Storms were rough for it and therefore rough for him. The lightning was bad enough, but something about the vibrations of the thunder really set the parasite on edge. Its distress and restlessness made him anxious in turn and they fed off of each other. Storms were one of the few times when he would give in and let the plaga have its way because what it wanted was harmless. This gave him his own reason for hating storms, because sitting in a dark room and drinking sour milk disgusted him, not the act itself, but because it was something that he did specifically because of the plaga. That he'd actually developed a taste for it and preferred it over fresh didn't help.

He was just about at that point, where he'd let the plaga send him into the kitchen to pour a glass of milk from the carton that he'd opened and left out that morning. He never drank straight from the carton because that would be crossing a line he didn't want to go past. Little things like that were important.

Something bumped against the living room window and he froze, the plaga twitching in his chest like a second heartbeat. A shadow was moving outside, a patch of darkness more solid than what was behind it. Aside from its moving, the plaga was taking things remarkably well. It wasn't goading him to act, doing whatever it did to get him pissed off enough to do something stupid. Maybe it was finally learning to behave.

Or maybe it knew something he didn't. What it noticed didn't always line up with what he did, which made figuring out what it was doing a challenge. It had thoughts of its own, ones it either couldn't or wouldn't share.

The thing outside was still there perched precariously in the bushes outside the window. Maybe it was a broken branch, a bit of windblown trash.

Except it was staying in place despite the bushes swaying wildly in the wind.

The plaga squirmed like it was rolling over in his chest, except it was large enough, so thoroughly enmeshed in him, that there was no clear distinction between it and him. It was restless, excited in the same way it got whenever the phone rang.

It had taken him way longer than it should have to realize the excitement wasn't his own, that there was no reason for him to be so happy when it was Ashley and so disappointed when it was anyone else. Somehow the plaga remembered her and because she was familiar to it, as well as him, it enjoyed his conversations with her. He suspected that it might be because it thought that she was still host to a plaga of her own because when he was talking he could feel strange, thrumming vibrations from the plaga, like it was trying to communicate. They hadn't met in person since getting back to the states so the plaga had no way of knowing that she was fine, except it had to have known that her plaga was dead. It had certainly responded to whatever silent cries it must have let out while she was strapped in the machine. It had thrashed around like it was the one being killed, leaving him coughing up blood and hardly able to breathe.

The plaga remembered enough to remember Ashley and to know that she'd been a host, but somehow it didn't realize that she'd been cured. Maybe it thought that because it had survived hers had survived as well.

Thinking like that frightened him because it meant that the plaga was capable of logic to some degree. Since the incident in Europe he'd learned more about plagas than he would have liked and he knew that they were sentient and social, but to what extent? Neither he nor any of the doctors working with him wanted to find another plaga of any form to find out what would happen for fear of things going terribly wrong.

A flash of lightning lit up the sky and for an instant the thing in the bushes was revealed, a skinny little cat that had been prowling around the apartment for a few months. He'd taken to feeding it because he felt bad for it. It didn't seem to be a stray, since when it had first showed up it had been clean and healthy looking, though after a few weeks it had started looking pretty pathetic. So he left food out for it and made a few attempts to coax it over to him, which it ignored.

Now it was outside in the storm, staring in at him.

Stupid thing, it should have had the sense to find a place to hide, but if it had been smarter it probably wouldn't have ended up lost in the first place.

He stared back at the cat, a solid blot against the darkness around it. It was funny, despite being more sensitive to light he couldn't actually see any better in the dark. He would have thought that it worked that way, especially since he knew his eyes had started to shine orange in the dark. Maybe that was just the start and later things would change. The cat on the other hand could see perfectly fine so maybe it wasn't stupid. It could have been staring at him, watching him pace, waiting for him to notice it and thinking that he was the one being stupid.

He opened the window, the wind driving rain in through the screen, which he pushed out of the way and immediately scowled. Without meaning to he'd slipped up and let the plaga make him act without thinking. Tomorrow he'd probably have to get a new screen for the window because he wasn't going out in this weather to get it back before it blew away.

The cat hunkered lower in the bush and then jumped in through the window. It shook itself off, something he thought only dogs did, sending water and hair in all directions.

It paced back and forth, letting out a series of squeaky little meows.

He leaned over and closed the window, not that it mattered, thanks to the cat the floor was already thoroughly wet.

"Tomorrow I'm taking you to the pound."

Because he didn't want a pet cat and he wasn't going to just put it outside again, not when it clearly wasn't suited for life outdoors. Let it go to someone who actually wanted it.

Keeping an eye on it he sat down on the sofa.

Instantly the cat jumped up and joined him, sitting down on his chest.

Great, now both the floor and the sofa were wet and so was he.

The cat kneaded its paws against his chest before hunkering down and purring.

In his chest the plaga quivered.

The cat's ears twitched and it sniffed at him.

Of course, it could probably smell the parasite, that was why it was so slow to trust him. He expected the cat to hiss and jump away.

The plaga moved again, making a sound that he felt more than heard.

The cat butted its head against his chest and purred even louder.

The plaga repeated the noise and the cat started kneading its paws against him again, purring all the while.

No.

He could actually feel the plaga relaxing, anxiety fading, replaced by curiosity and then excitement. This time it made a noise he could actually hear and the cat let out a curious little chirp before resuming purring.

The two of them went back and forth, making little noises like they were having a conversation.

Again, no.

He didn't want a pet. He didn't even like cats.

The plaga on the other hand…


	15. We Won't Get Fooled Again

**Summary:** An ordinary day for some ordinary scientists.

 **Characters:** Assorted Original Characters

 **Notes:** Came from a discussion with DarkGidora. I found a biomedical company with a website that looked like something out of a videogame, showed it to him and we got to talking about biomedical companies in the RE setting and how the events that have taken place would influence things.

o0o

"Just got another text from Lorren," Jared looked up from his phone, "More cops have arrived. They're not doing anything other than keeping the crowds on the right side of the barricades. Security is all over the place. Word is that they've got two guys at every door just in case and they've got a dozen guys in the lobby if the protestors have another go at the door."

Work in the labs had ground to a standstill since the protesters had started arriving early in the day. It wasn't that they were interfering with anything since all the action was happening outside the building, far from the labs, the problem was curiosity. Everyone was curious why they were there since hardly anything interesting ever happened at the labs. By late afternoon no one was even pretending to work, not when the building was under lockdown after several of the protestors had walked into the lobby and started harassing anyone they could find. Everyone on the later shifts had been told not to show up and there was talk of evacuating if things didn't get under control soon. Since the police had arrived nothing too crazy had happened, though no one had tried to leave the building since then.

"Ask her if she's got any clue what why they're here," Emily chimed in, "I mean from her desk she should be able to see their signs."

"Alright," Jared quickly tapped out a text and they waited eagerly for a response. None of them had ever imagined getting caught up in anything like this, Horizon BioMed was a small company that focused mostly on antiretroviral drugs and cancer treatment, nothing particularly interesting as far as anyone outside of the relevant fields was. Their latest success had been getting a new drug for cancer treatment approved for human trials, which was largely beneath notice. It seemed that all people cared about were B.O.W.s and zombies, with cancer being far too mundane to get the attention it deserved.

Jared's phone buzzed with a new text from Lorren.

"Well, that's a thing," he held the phone up for the others to see, "This is the first of a dozen pictures she took."

They all stared at the slightly blurry image on the screen, trying to make sense of it.

"It looks like a little kid's drawing," Joe was the first to speak up, "Are these people for real?"

"I think it's supposed to be our logo turned into an angry face," Emily offered, "And it's breathing fire on a bunch of stick figures."

Joe rolled his eyes, "Because that makes sense. Did she get any pictures of signs that are actually, you know, signs?"

"Yeah, give me a sec," Jared scrolled though the pictures, most of them were either too blurry to make out or at angles that made them impossible to read, but one of them was a simple white sign with block letters in black that had little red drips drawn on the bottom of them for good measure, "This one has words on it at least."

"I think the fire breathing angry face made more sense," Emily said after examining the image.

"It looks like it was written by the same kid who made the first sign," Warren shook his head, "Can these people even spell?"

"What do you think it means?" Jared wondered. The sign had words on it, but it looked like word salad with the words, or maybe phrase, 'SICK SEMPER TYRANTS' painted on it in all capital letters.

"Sic semper tyrannis, as written by someone who can't spell," Warren's tone dripped with contempt, "Or maybe they think they're being witty."

"I get that," Jared sighed, "I just don't get what it has to do with us."

The last picture was the most clear in its message, a group of three kids, who looked like college students, holding up a banner that proclaimed 'Horizon BioMed=Cancer!' and offered no additional insight into what the gathered crowd was actually protesting against.

"The protestors have a Facebook group," Arthur spoke up for the first time since they'd given up on working and started standing around talking about what was going on outside, "Or at least there's a Facebook group that's talking about them. As far as I can tell it's a bunch of anti-vaccine and anti-GMO nutjobs with a few anti-B.O.W. ranters thrown in for good measure."

"What's that have to do with us?" Joe laughed, "We don't make vaccines, we don't do anything with transgenic anything and everyone who's in their right mind is against B.O.W.s."

Jared's phone buzzed, interrupting the discussion. It was another text from Lorren, which he read aloud.

"Nothing official yet, but I hear talk that they're going ahead with the plans to evacuate. Going out the front doors isn't an option, even with all the cops. Looks like a couple hundred people out there now and more showing up."

"But no clue why we're being invaded by the granola people?" Warren snorted, then, noticing the looks the others were giving him, he went on to elaborate, "You know, a bunch of fruits, nuts and flakes."

"You don't think…" Emily trailed off, "No, that's too absurd, like distemper, dat temper all over again."

"What?" Warren stared at her, "Are you making fun of me or something? Because that makes about as much sense as the signs those idiots are waving."

"No," Emily shook her head, "Back in college for second year biology one of the assignments was to pick a scientific paper, read it and explain it to the rest of the class in as simple a way as possible. One of the girls chose a paper on epizootic distemper in the seal population somewhere. The seals were getting it from dogs, but the girl didn't realize what distemper was, she kept thinking that it was a behavioral problem, that the seals were picking up from dogs. She kept referring to the 'temper' of the seals and how they 'were acting like dogs'."

"Okay, you went to college with idiots," Warren laughed, "But what's that got to do with anything."

"Ooh, I think I get it," Arthur laughed, "There was a newspaper article on the drug trial that's about to start. I remember reading it and thinking that the title was too melodramatic. Give me a minute and I'll see if I can pull it up."

Five minutes later they'd all read the article and had no better understanding of what was going on, and that was with Lorren's continuing status updates from the front desk in the lobby. Now it seemed that plans were being made to have security escort people out of the building in groups of two or three and hope that the protestors didn't notice. Also the protestors had started throwing things at the windows and the police still weren't doing anything.

When Arthur's phone was passed back to him he skimmed through the article, double checking something before smiling, "They're here because they think we're making Tyrants."

"Why?" Warren asked the question that was on everybody's mind, "That makes less than no sense."

"Dis temper dat temper," Emily giggled, "Whoever was quoted for the article talked about how the drug stimulates T cells to more effectively attack cancer cells."

"No," Joe stared at her incredulous, "You don't really think…"

"That people think T cells have something to do with the T-virus?" Emily smiled wryly, "Why wouldn't they? It's all anyone thinks about anymore."


	16. Diptych 1

**Summary:** Resident Evil: Revelations fic, written because the T-Abyss virus is my second favorite virus in the series.

 **Characters:** Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Jack Norman

 **Notes:** This was one of several things written a long while ago, back when I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the T-Abyss. I left it sitting around on my computer, and more or less forgot it until I started doing some cleaning. Realizing that having finished pieces sitting around was kind of pointless I've decided to post this. The title is because I wrote this exact same fic twice. The following chapter is going to be the second version, just different enough that I figured it was worth putting up both. Please feel free to comment on which one you prefer.

o0o

Jill had first noticed it during the helicopter ride to the wreck of the Queen Dido, Chris had been sitting slumped in his seat wearing a look of bone weary exhaustion. It was a sharp contrast to the almost manic energy he'd had during their escape from the Zenobia. She couldn't blame him though, she was tired as well and there hadn't been a chance for him to fill her in on what he'd been doing while she'd been searching for him. She was certain that it had been an ordeal though, just looking at him made that much clear.

As she watched he grimaced and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The sight brought a smile to her face despite the unknown threat looming ahead of them. The only time Chris liked flying was when he was the pilot and she was sure that once they arrived Chris was going to complain about the flight, telling her everything he would have done better than the pilot. It was largely her fault though, the first time she'd heard him complaining about a flight she'd laughed and in doing so unknowingly encouraged him. Since then it had become a routine, one that he kept up for her benefit.

He'd opened his eyes he looked up and seeing her smiling, he smiled back, "Not much farther, huh? When this is over what do you say we see about taking a few days off and playing tourist for a bit?"

"You think there's going to be any chance of that after this mess?" she laughed at the thought, despite or maybe because of how impossible it was. A vacation in Europe with Chris was the kind of thing she imagined when she let her mind wander to the distant future, one where they were both retired and done with saving the world from whatever the next bioterrorist threat was.

Chris' expression turned bitter, "A guy can hope, can't he?"

Feeling guilty for dismissing the idea so easily she shrugged, "Well, we've certainly earned it. I guess there's no harm in asking."

"Yeah," Chris nodded and fell silent.

She was about to say more, but she realized that he'd fallen asleep. It was probably for the best, if he was as tired as he looked he was going to need the rest. There was no telling what they'd encounter when they arrived at the Dido.

Once they were actually there, in the water, she regretted not having said more, especially about the state Chris was in. She'd had to help him into his scuba gear, but that wasn't exactly unusual. It was always easier with help, at least that was what she'd told herself at the time, because the thought of going into the sunken ship alone had been too much. It was a mistake, one made for selfish reasons and the further into the ship they went the worse she felt about it. There was something wrong with Chris and if not for her he would have been on the helicopter, heading back to shore and safety. Instead he was following her deeper into the ship and whatever danger was certain to be there, trailing behind her and more pulling himself along the walls and floor with his hands than swimming. If she didn't make a point of stopping every so often there was a very real risk of leaving him behind.

It was strange how quickly things could change. Relief at finding him turning to fear when the corridor she was in flooded while returning to him with the codes needed to neutralize the virus. She'd been so sure that the flood was caused by the catwalks above collapsing and tearing up the floor and walls in the process that she'd been unable to think of anything other than how horrible it would be if Chris drowned, or worse, after all they'd been through. It wasn't supposed to end like that and it hadn't. He'd been waiting for her, perfectly safe and sound. When he helped pull her out of the horrible red soup of virus and seawater she hadn't been able to help herself, she threw her arms around him and then they'd kissed. It wasn't the sort of situation she'd imagined as being romantic, him soaked with sweat and seawater, her coated in a sticky mess of the most vile things imaginable, but it was easily the most passionate kiss she'd ever experienced.

And now she was right back to being worried.

"Are you sure you're alright?" she asked as she peered down the corridor ahead, letting the pretense of figuring out which way to go next serve as an excuse to let him catch up.

"I'm fine. Where…" having caught up with her he stopped and leaned heavily against the wall, "Which way now?

He was breathing heavily, never a good thing with limited oxygen. They needed to hurry, but Chris seemed incapable of going any faster.

"Right I think…" she started forward, but no sooner did she move than a cloud of dust rose up in the distance. Immediately she ducked back down the corridor, "We're not alone down here."

"Whatever it is, we're not going to be able to fight it off," Chris put a hand on her shoulder in a protective gesture that would mean nothing if whatever it was stirring up the dust proved to be a threat.

They backed up farther, staying low to the floor in the hope that whatever it was wouldn't notice them and after an agonizingly long wait, the creature finally appeared. One of the horrible, blobby creatures that she'd seen washed up on the beach undulated past them, its formless bulk taking up most of the hallway.

"It…" Chris leaned forward to watch as it vanished into the distance, "Whatever it was, it didn't notice us."

They pressed on and before long they found more of the creatures, all mercifully dead. Or maybe sleeping. It was hard to tell and the water moving around them made it look like the creatures were rippling.

In one room they entered there was a pile of them pressed against the far wall. Seeing no way out Jill started to turn around.

"Did you see that one?" Chris asked as she swam past him.

"No."

He didn't elaborate or press the matter and she was grateful. She knew exactly which of the things he was talking about, the one with arms and the outline of a nearly human face in its otherwise formless bulk. The things had been human, Veltro terrorists of course, but she didn't want to think about how a virus, one she'd nearly drowned in, was able to twist somebody so far beyond recognition. If she hadn't found the vaccine…if the catwalks had collapsed and Chris had fallen in…

Eventually they reached a room with a hatch leading to a corridor that went straight up. It had taken both of them working together to turn the valve on the hatch, which was more frightening than any on the mutants they'd encountered. Chris should have been able to easily handle it on his own and that she'd had to do most of the work was the surest sign so far that something was terribly wrong.

In small mercy there was an air pocket at the top of the corridor and when she knocked on the hatch she could tell by the echo that there was more air on the other side.

"We made it," she panted with relief.

Chris nodded and pulled out his respirator, gasping as though he'd been drowning.

She had to handle the hatch on her own and ended up helping Chris out of the water.

For a very long while he lay on the floor, breathing heavily. It was hard to tell in the dim glow of the ship's emergency lighting, but he looked pale, almost grayish, as though he were in shock.

At long last he rose unsteadily to his feet and, seeing her look of concern, shook his head, "Don't worry. Now that we're out of the water I'll be fine."

His reassurance failed in every way, in no small part due to the fact that his teeth started chattering half way through.

"Are you sure? Because…" she trailed off when she put a hand on his arm and felt how cold he was.

"I told you, I'm fine," he shrugged away from her and went into the next room, leaning heavily on the wall the whole way.

The sight of a body on the floor put an end to the conversation, at least for the time being. The man was wearing an FBC uniform and the blood on the walls and floor around him had yet to dry. He was covered in the expected collection of claw and bite marks, but none of them were severe enough to be fatal. Instead what killed him was an unmistakable gunshot wound to the chest.

"What do you think happened to him?" Chris started and then immediately corrected himself, "I mean other than the obvious."

It was a poor joke, but it helped break the tension. Jill laughed as she knelt down to examine the body and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the unknown agent had a recorder in his hand, "We might actually find out."

She hit play and though she would have preferred that they continue forward, Chris raised a good point when he suggested that whatever the man had to say, it might give them a hint of what was waiting for them so that they should probably listen before going any further. If not for the fact that he slumped to the floor as soon as he finished speaking she would have argued.

So they listened to the agent's last words, learning nothing that they didn't already know. The things they'd seen were the last real Veltro survivors and the FBC was involved in a cover up of what had happened to Terriagregia.

When the recording ended Chris was the first to speak, "It's the gunshot wound that bothers me. It's obviously not suicide and if it was friendly fire you think he would have mentioned it."

"So you think there's a third party involved, one we don't know about?" Jill wondered out loud as she looked at the body one last time, wondering if there was some clue that they'd missed.

"Or maybe some of Veltro survived down here all this time," Chris shivered as he spoke, "Could you imagine that? Trapped underwater for over a year in a ship crawling with monsters that used to be guys you knew?"

"Why are you so morbid all of a sudden? Let's keep going," Jill offered Chris a hand and he took it, nearly pulling her to the floor with him as he pulled himself to his feet with her help. His hand was cold and clammy to the touch, slick with sweat, and when she looked at it she saw the grayish tinge beneath his nails, a sure sign of poor circulation. Everything pointed towards him going into shock and there was nothing they could do except keep going.

The next few rooms were unremarkable, containing the bodies of several FBC agents, but no sign of Veltro or monsters.

"Where are they?" she asked as she peered around a corner and found still more FBC agents and no trace of what had killed them.

The next room they entered contained the answer.

A small dining hall had been turned into a mausoleum, or maybe a shrine of sorts. In the center of the room stood a long table, the bodies of Veltro and monsters alike lay on it, each wrapped in a sheet or a Veltro flag. Candles flickered in the corners of the room, casting a warm, flickering light over the room. It was ominous and at the same time strangely peaceful. Most of the bodies were fresh, though the smell of decay hung heavy in the room.

Jill turned to Chris, not sure what to say, and found that he was looking at the wall. It was covered in marks, some scratched in by knife or claws, others written in dark smears that might have been blood.

"They were keeping track of time," Chris commented when he finished counting, "Waiting, like they knew someone was going to come."

"Do you think they expected someone to save them?" Jill went over next to him and he put a hand on her shoulder, in a gesture that would have been more comforting if not for the slight tremors running through him.

Gently he pushed her away from the wall, towards the door to the next room and whatever lay beyond, "No, I don't think so. If O'Brian is right, there's information down here that the FBC doesn't want coming to light. I think Veltro knew someone was going to come after it eventually, that's why some of them…"

He looked back at the bodies on the table, some still human, others mutated beyond recognition.

"Why would anyone willingly…" Jill trailed off. She'd seen it happen before, but still couldn't understand the thought process that lead to someone deciding that infecting themselves with something like the t-virus or any of its derivatives was a viable course of action.

Chris shook his head, "Let's just keep going. There's at least one survivor and I don't want to get caught standing round."

Wordlessly Jill followed him into the next room, a makeshift recording studio of sorts. There were a series of cameras positioned in front of a Veltro flag and assorted other pieces of recording equipment as well as several computers on tables throughout the room. If any of the computers were still in working condition, and it looked like most of them were, there was likely a wealth of evidence to be found, provided the time to sort through it all.

"I think we've done it," Jill smiled at Chris. He smiled back, weak and forced as it was.

"Do we call in and head back or…" he gestured at the trail of bloody footprints leading across the room to the door opposite the one they'd entered. The far door was ajar and beyond it they could hear the soft muttering of someone reciting what sounded like poetry.

As little as Jill liked it there wasn't really a choice, "We've got to clear the place before we call it quits."

"Yeah," Chris grimaced as he drew his gun, "You mind taking the lead? I'm not…"

"Don't worry about it," Jill stepped forward and cautiously opened the door. It lead down an ornate stairway to another door, this one also open. Beyond she was able to see a figure sitting amid a pile of debris. Whoever it was seemed unaware of their approach as he continued reciting words in what Jill assumed to be Italian. Languages had never been her strong point, but in this case assuming it was Italian seemed a safe bet.

"Do we just shoot him and be done with it?" Chris asked as they reached the bottom of the steps, "That's Jack Norman, the one behind all this."

"Except Lansdale's the one who funded him and started the whole mess," Jill scowled, "We've got to try to take him into custody."

Opening the door the rest of the way she stepped into the room.

Instantly Norman looked up, wide eyes staring straight past her, as though she wasn't there at all.

"Morgan! Morgan Lansdale! How dare you cross Veltro?" his harsh, slightly hysterical voice echoed in the small room as he held up a small object in his right hand in what might have been a grandiose gesture if not for how disheveled and outright frantic he looked, "This is what you seek, is it not? Indeed. This little machine contains the truth, all the truth needed to bring down your entire charade."

Laughing he threw the object at the ground a few feet from Jill. It was a PDA.

While Chris kept an eye on the Veltro leader Jill inched forward and grabbed the PDA.

"This is it, we've got the evidence," Jill said as she passed the device to Chris, "You take this and keep it safe, I'll deal with Norman."

Chris tried to protest, but she wasn't going to let him, "Please, you're in a bad shape. I don't know what's going on, but you can hardly stay on your feet. If things get ugly I don't want to have to worry about you."

Closing his eyes he grimaced, but he took the PDA from her.

"Stop."

Jill didn't even need to turn and look to know that Chris had done exactly that. She wanted to yell, to scream for him to hurry up and go, but what Jack Norman was doing held her transfixed as well. He'd taken yet another object out of the numerous pockets of his vest and held it up so that both of them could see it. A single vial of an unmistakable red liquid. Jill gasped and Chris let out what sounded like muttered profanity.

"Morgan!" Norman laughed, holding the vial high above his head, his hands shaking so badly that Jill was sure he would drop it, "Behold the terror which you have unleashed."

"What do we do?" Jill whispered, afraid that any movement she made would be enough to drive Norman to do something. What he would do she wasn't sure. They were far enough away that there was no way he could do anything to them unless…

"I don't know," Chris hissed through clenched teeth, trying and failing to suppress a groan of pain.

Norman's eyes focused on him and, grinning maniacally, he drank the contents of the vial.

It was all Jill could do to keep from retching. She knew what it tasted like, what it felt like from when the room she'd been in had flooded with the t-Abyss virus. Except she'd been protected by the vaccine and Norman…

He fell to his knees, convulsing wildly. She could hear the horrible sounds he was making, not just the gurgling moans of pain, but the cracking of bone and muscle warping and contorting into new forms. His clothing tore, unable to contain his expanding body, and then there was a spray of blood as skin gave way as well, spined, finlike growths emerging on either side of some pulsing tumorous growth on his back.

Norman rose to his feet, a strange thrumming sound filled the air, rising and falling in time with the twitching of the growth on his back. The noise echoed and reverberated back on itself over and over again, something Jill felt as much as heard. It made her ears ring and she could feel the unmistakable throbbing of a migraine starting behind her eyes. She could hear Chris moaning in the corner of the room and knew that he felt the same.

Struggling to keep her eyes focused, she raised her gun and took aim at Norman, just as his face started to split down the middle. The crack of the gunshot was lost to the horrible thrumming and a blinding light filled the room. Jill staggered back, raising an arm to shield her eyes. The floor was shaking, something, Norman, was rushing towards her like an oncoming train and she threw herself to the side, hoping that she'd chosen the right direction to dodge.

The B.O.W. thundered past her, crashing into the wall and letting out a roar that left her ears ringing.

Eyes watering, she squinted through the dazzling lights and saw the blurred image of Norman turning back to have another go, except when she blinked the image doubled, then trebled. She rubbed at her eyes and the image resolved into a single form, just in time for Norman's face to open up again. This time she got a good look at the layers of petal-like flesh surrounding a single, gleaming eye. The petals pulsed and then she was blind again.

Norman took his time, using the acoustics of the room to mask his approach. He was getting closer, she could tell by the growing volume of the hum, but she couldn't determine which direction he was coming from.

By the time her vision cleared he was mere feet from her, except she could see through him, his outline wavering. What was –

"Jill!"

She couldn't imagine how loudly Chris must have been shouting for her to hear him over the hum and she turned in the direction of his voice.

"Chris?" her own shout was lost in the noise.

"He's behind you!"

Jill managed to duck just in time, actually feeling the wind from Norman's massive claws as they passed over her head.

Her ears popped and white hot pain filled her head. She expected Norman to follow through with another attack while she was vulnerable, but the attack never came. Instead he turned away and started lumbering towards the far end of the room.

Her ears popped twice more before she realized that the muffled sound was gunfire, Chris had managed to draw Norman's attention away from her. The B.O.W.'s back was to her now, and taking great care to keep her hands steady and be sure that the thing she was aiming at was actually Norman, not her eyes playing tricks on her, she fired three shots in rapid succession.

This time Norman's roar was loud enough to drive her to her knees as she dropped her gun and covered her ears.

Norman roared and she screamed. He was charging her again and this time there was no way for her to escape in time. She couldn't even tell which of the blurred images was him anymore. Phantasmal claws slashed the air in front of her again and again as she flinched out of the way. Sooner or later the real Norman would strike and then it would be over.

Another roar, this one farther away. Maybe she had more time than she thought. Maybe if she could find her gun she actually stood a chance. Forcing herself to look away from the ghost images, she instead she focused on finding her weapon. Unfortunately, her double vison persisted and she found herself with no fewer than three wavering images on the floor.

Norman growled and dragged a clawed foot across the floor. He'd stopped attacking for some reason, maybe to savor her fear.

"Get away from her!"

Of course, just because she couldn't hear it didn't mean that Chris had stopped shooting. He must have opened fire the moment she dropped to the ground, drawing Norman's attention back to him.

She grasped at shadows, each time she thought she'd found the gun her fingers passed through it. There wasn't much time, she needed to find her gun before Norman charged Chris.

Her fingers brushed against something cold and hard as they passed over what appeared to be an empty stretch of floor. She'd found her gun. Her hands were shaking and her head was spinning as she rolled over onto her back. Standing up would take too long in the state she was in and Norman had already stepped past her. She watched as he hunched over in preparation to charge, but she could also see his fins rippling, spreading out. It was the perfect shot, except she knew exactly what was going to follow.

Closing her eyes she squeezed the trigger and hoped for the best. The flash of light was bright enough that even through her eyelids she was aware of it. The shot had gone wide and by the time she opened her eyes Norman had already reached Chris.

Helpless she watched as he picked Chris up with one clawed paw and casually tossed him aside. Chris hit the wall with a sickening crunch, leaving a smear of dark blood behind as he slid to the floor, but instead of falling limp he rolled to his hands and knees. Somehow he'd survived, but there was nothing he could do to defend himself. Norman was charging again and Chris wasn't even attempting to get out of the way. Jill assumed that he was stunned and tried to fire another shot at the B.O.W. only to realize that she'd run out of ammo. There was no way she'd be able to reload in time, but she had to try.

Time seemed to be moving in slow motion as she fumbled with her gun, not daring to take her eyes off of Chris. She could see him tense. He was going to try and get away, but there was no time, Norman was practically on top of him.

Norman raised a clawed paw and let out a triumphant bellow that cut off abruptly as Chris lunged forward and slammed into his knees, knocking him to the floor, even as Norman raked his claws across his side. Somehow he held on as Norman thrashed and pawed at him. Instead of letting go he dragged himself up, keeping low to Norman's body and preventing him from getting up. Norman was able to get a few good blows in, claws tearing ragged gashes across Chris' back, but Chris still managed to hold on and get in a few largely ineffectual punches.

Jill finally finished reloading as Chris reached the B.O.W.'s chest, though there was no way she could take the chance of shooting now, not when Chris was right on top of him. Norman's face began to unfurl, but she didn't dare look away. Chris had started to sit up, drawing his arm back just as Norman raised a paw and caught Chris across the face.

The noise of the impact made Jill's stomach churn, but Chris, his features now obscured by his own freely flowing blood, merely let out a grunt of pain and slammed his fist down into Norman's open face.

This time there was no flash of light, just a spray of blood.

Chris pulled his hand back and flung a grisly lump of something across the room. He'd managed to pull out Norman's eye.

Pushing himself away from Norman, Chris staggered back and shook his head, sending blood flying in all directions.

"Jill?" his voice was hoarse and uncertain as he tried to wipe the blood from his eyes with his gore smeared hands. That he was able to stand at all seemed impossible. Through countless tears in his wetsuit she was able to see numerous deep cuts, some looking like they went all the way to the bone. His face was unrecognizable, Norman's claws having managed to catch his nose and cheek. It was hard to tell, but Jill thought she caught a glimpse of teeth through one of the gashes.

There was more to it, what skin of his that she was able to see through the blood had taken on an ashy pallor, no doubt from blood loss. His injuries needed immediate attention, but Norman was already getting back up.

"Chris! Look out!" her vision having cleared enough, Jill fired past him, managing to hit the B.O.W. several times in the chest. Unfortunately, the injuries seemed to inflict little in the way of actual damage and served only to draw his attention to her.

Norman plodded uncertainly forward, turning his head left and right as he scanned the room with milky eyes. It seemed like his normal eyes were largely blind, for he ignored Chris despite his only being a few feet away.

Chris gave up on getting the blood off of his face and watched as Norman stepped by him, ruined features twisting into a lopsided smile as his eyes fell on Norman's back.

Faster than he should have been able to given the condition he was in Chris rushed Norman and punched him right between the serrated fins running down his back. There was a spray of gore and Norman let out a bellow of rage.

Looking away from Norman Chris reached into his pocket and tossed the PDA to her, "You get out of here, I'll hold him back."

The sound of his voice, thick with pain and blood, brought tears to Jill's eyes, "No, I'll –"

"I said get out!" his features contorted with rage and he turned from her to meet Norman's rush head on.

Something about the look in his eyes, a strange desperation she'd never seen before, filled her with fear and she did as told, fleeing the room and running up the stairs.

Halfway to the top, her eyes still aching from the lights, she had another bout of double vision and tripped. Barely managing to catch herself on the railing she stopped and waited for the sensation of vertigo to fade. Carefully, she lowered herself into a sitting position so that she wouldn't fall. Behind her she could hear the sounds of the fight. That it even was a fight, that Chris was somehow managing to hold his own against something like Norman, was impossible.

A roar that shook her to her very bones swept through the hall, one that grew louder and louder in volume, the noise somehow doubling back on itself in an echo deeper than the original.

Against her better judgement she looked back and saw something that was impossible to blame on her eyes playing tricks on her.

Chris was laying on the floor, writhing in pain and Norman was crouched at the far end of the room, blood oozing down his face and back, one of his fins torn nearly completely off.

Norman started forward, more cautiously now that he was injured and mostly blind, giving Chris time to stand up and shake off the tattered remains of his wetsuit. Thick, purple tinged veins twitched under gray flesh as he took a deep breath and let out a growl so deep that the very air seemed to shake from it. By the time Norman closed the distance between the two of them Chris was ready for him.

She sat frozen, unable to move as the two massive B.O.W.s fought each other.

How?

But she knew the answer as sure as she knew what Jack Norman had tasted when he infected himself with t-Abyss. She'd gotten a mouthful of virus contaminated water on the Zenobia and when Chris had pulled her out of the water they'd kissed. A simple, unthinking action and with it she'd doomed the man she loved.

Norman tried his earlier hit and run style of attacks, but no longer able to emit flashes of blinding light it was only a matter of time. Every time he lunged forward Chris would meet him head on and they'd slam into each other with a thunderous crash. Norman would try to dart back and Chis would follow, not giving him the space he needed to ready his next attack as he punched and clawed Norman into a bloody mess. Jill could hear flesh tearing and bones breaking with every impact. It wasn't an even fight by any stretch of the imagination, Chris was about a head shorter, but he wasn't the one at a disadvantage. Norman fought like a trapped animal, swiping and clawing at Chris wherever he could land a blow, while Chris stayed focused. Every punch, every swat with his claws, was carefully aimed. Again and again he struck Norman in the chest and back, shattering ribs and tearing through muscle until the inevitable happened.

When the pair of B.O.W.s broke apart after an exchange of blows Jill caught a glimpse of Norman's exposed heart twitching between shattered ribs. The next time Norman closed in Chris struck and it was over. Norman staggered back, blood spurting everywhere as he fell to his knees and then keeled over.

Chris let out a roar of triumph over his fallen foe, the sound deep and full of menace.

She had to leave and quickly, but she lingered on, watching as Chris turned from the body and paced the room like a caged animal. Every time he got near the door he would turn sharply away and stop to take several deep breaths before resuming his pacing.

What was he doing?

Again he turned from the door, this time walking deliberately to the far end of the room to punch the wall. In the places where his skin had torn on his back and arms she could see the different muscle groups tensing as he mindlessly lashed out.

He was completely gone except…

No, he wasn't. With whatever bit of humanity that remained he was holding himself back, giving her as much time as possible to get away.

Gripping the banister she took a deep breath and stood, only to fall back down the moment she put weight on her right foot. Unable to help herself she let out a small gasp of pain. She'd managed to twist her ankle when she tripped.

She couldn't hear Chris pacing any more, instead she could hear a low, rumbling growl interspersed with heavy, animal panting.

It was getting closer.

"Jill…"

The single word, barely more than a growl, was full of rage.

Using the banister to help haul herself up she tried to escape, knowing that she was doomed.

The door slammed open behind her and she turned to look. The least she could do was meet her end bravely rather than waiting for it to come up behind her. As high as the ceiling was and as wide as the hallway was, he still seemed to fill it.

"Jill," a mottled purple tongue ran over teeth far too sharp as he loomed over her.

His eyes were empty, glistening white, she had to look away from them and found herself staring at his teeth instead. She could see too many of them, his lips were gone, either from the mutation or torn away during the fight and there were several holes in his cheeks from where Norman had clawed him, allowing her to see even more teeth. Blood bubbled from his ruined nose as he exhaled.

He knelt down next to her, close enough that she could see the thin red veins across the otherwise blank surfaces of his eyes.

"You're…hurt," his breath hit her face, hot and rancid.

Of all the things she expected to happen next, him standing up and holding out a hand, its fingers webbed and partially fused, to help her up wasn't one of them.

"I won't…" he brought his hand closer, "hurt you…"

His malformed fingers were tipped with long wickedly sharp looking claws. She couldn't tell if he was trying to reassure her or convince himself.

When she didn't move he slowly, carefully hooked two fingers under her arm and pulled her to her feet.

"Here… I'll help," each word was a struggle for him, his entire body tense from the effort.

"I can walk," her voice was flat, mechanical as she continued to stare at his face, looking for something recognizable there, some sign that he wouldn't lose whatever semblance of control he had left and turn on her. Finding nothing she rose to her feet, only to fall yet again

This time Chris was there to catch her, effortlessly picking her up and holding her against his chest like she weighed nothing at all. She could feel the slow, regular beat of his heart, a sharp contrast to her own racing pulse. Completely at his mercy, she allowed him to carry her the rest of the way up the stairs.

Something of Chris must have remained, but did that make things better or worse?


	17. Diptych 2

**Summary:** Resident Evil: Revelations fic, written because the T-Abyss virus is my second favorite virus in the series.

 **Characters:** Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Jack Norman

 **Notes:** Technically exactly the same as the previous chapter, just with a few things switched around because I couldn't decide which felt better.

o0o

As the helicopter left the sinking Queen Zenobia behind Chris kept his eye on Jill. During the struggle on the deck of the ship she hadn't seemed her usual self. Her reaction time was off and on several occasions she had barely jumped back in time to avoid being crushed by one of the monstrous worms diving in and out of the rotten bulk of the whale. On one occasion he'd actually needed to shove her out of the way and her response had been to smile dazedly and mutter her thanks.

Staring at the smoke rising from the nearly vanished ship she wiped the back of her hand across her forehead before unzipping the front of her wetsuit and fanning at herself.

"These things are too tight in all the wrong places," she said to no one in particular, then, finally noticing how he was watching her she gave him another vague smile, "Don't worry. I told you, there was a vaccine down there. I was able to use it before the place flooded."

Flooded with the virus culture was what she meant. He'd panicked when it had happened, when the thick red soup below the catwalk had fell by several feet all he could think was that they'd failed, that somehow the virus had been released into the ocean. Then he'd started seeing movement in the remaining liquid and prepared for the worst.

He'd been so ready for it that, until she called out to him, he'd been sure that the shape moving beneath the red liquid was some sort of new monster, he'd nearly shot her. Since then she'd repeated several times that she'd found and used a vaccine before anything happened, as much to reassure herself as him he was sure.

Maybe he shouldn't have worried so much. She'd undergone a series of blood tests shortly before the mission and they both knew the results, that there were still t-virus antibodies in her bloodstream, making the vaccine she'd used more of a booster than anything. She'd be fine, there was no reason she wouldn't, but he still worried.

She moaned, eyes closed she rubbed at her temples and he froze, caught between reaching out for her and going for his gun. If she wasn't okay and she did end up mutating on the helicopter...

"Really, I'm okay. Just a headache from the fumes from" she opened her eyes and gestured in the direction of the smoke plume, "by the time we get to…where we're going I'll be fine. I'm already feeling better."

She moved over to lean against him and by the time they arrived he had to shake her awake.

"I'm fine," she blinked blearily at him and smiled through chattering teeth.

"Maybe you should sit this one out," he tried to guide her back into her seat, but she pushed him away and staggered over to get her scuba gear.

"I was just a little tired," she fumbled with the straps of her wetsuit and started maneuvering her air hose into place, "The nap I took on the way was enough."

"Are you sure?" he started to take the respirator from her only for her to grab his wrist. For how out of it she was acting her grip was surprisingly strong.

"I told you I'm fine."

"Okay, okay," he let go of the respirator and, after a moment's hesitation, she let go of his wrist.

"I just don't want anything to happen to you when I'm not around," she said as she shrugged her scuba gear into place with a great deal of wiggling and squirming, "After all I went through trying to find you."

He wasn't about to point out that he'd been looking for her as well, instead he contented himself with helping her finish getting into her gear. When he zipped her wetsuit up the rest of the way she scowled and pulled it back down a few inches, "I'm cooking in this thing."

Despite her insistence and the fact that she was dripping with sweat, she was shaking, her teeth chattering so hard that she was barely able to get her mouthpiece in. Yet as soon as the helicopter was low enough she was the first one in the water.

"I told you, I'm fine," her voice crackled over the radio, "Just needed to wake up a little."

He had to admit that she did sound better. Maybe he was worrying too much about nothing, still shaken by what he could have sworn he'd seen earlier. His imagination was getting to him, that was all.

Inside the ship there was plenty to keep his mind occupied, like how several of the corridors were practically filled with mutated…things. Thankfully they were all either dead or inactive, though he wasn't going to try and shoot one to find out which. With no identifiable anatomy he had no clue where to shoot to hit anything vital and he wasn't sure what would happen if he just wounded one, not that shooting them was an option underwater. Technically it was possible, but he'd much rather keep his guns safe and dry until they found an air pocket, if they found an air pocket. He hoped they would, dealing with B.O.W.s while trapped in a flooded ship was like something out of a nightmare and he had no idea how he'd manage if it came to that.

At an intersection he nearly swam into Jill, who had stopped in the middle to peer intently down the hall.

"There's something down there," she spoke slowly, something about her tone letting him know that she was in pain again and trying to hide it, "It's…"

He looked around her, but couldn't see anything. In the dim light she looked unnaturally pale and when he grabbed her hand it was cold to the touch, too cold.

"We should turn around," he said, pulling her back into the corridor.

She squeezed his hand weakly, "I don't think there's another way around though. Maybe we can wait for it to pass."

"Maybe, but if it doesn't pass we're turning back," by his tone he tried to make it an order, but it was hard to keep the concern out of his voice. Whatever was wrong with her was worse than he'd first thought. Not only was she cold and pale, she was hallucinating. Mission be damned, everything else could wait until he got her out of the ship and back to safety. It never should have gotten to this point in the first place, back on the helicopter he should have put his foot down and made her stay.

"It's almost…" she pushed him to the wall and pressed against it next to him.

"Jill, there's nothing –" before he could finish something large and formless undulated past them. Apparently there was at least one of the strange mutants left alive. Probably some sort of sea life, because it was impossible to imagine that any virus could degrade the human body so utterly.

Once they were sure the creature was past and wasn't going to turn around they pressed on and found themselves in a room full of more dead mutants. Jill's attention was on the hatch on the ceiling of the room and she went straight to it while he made the mistake of looking around. The dust churned up by their movements made the water shimmer so that the things almost looked like they were moving. Something waved bonelessly near the floor and he turned his flashlight towards it. Immediately he wished he hadn't. A roughly human torso terminated in a shapeless blob. The things were what was left of the Veltro members who'd ended up stuck on the sunken ship.

"I've got it open!" Jill's voice brought his attention back upwards.

After that it was a quick swim straight up to a second hatch. Surfacing into the air pocket was a relief, at least until he saw how pale Jill was were and noticed that she'd unzipped the front of her wetsuit again, completely defeating the point of it all. He started to comment, but the look she shot him made him stop dead.

"At least there's still air in here," he commented needlessly, to say something rather than just stare. Something was wrong, very, very wrong.

Once they were out of the water a new distraction presented itself in the form of a dead FBC agent. The man hadn't been dead long judging by the still growing pool of blood spreading around him.

"This was in his hand," Jill stood up from where she'd been examining the body and held out a recorder to him.

Hoping for answers he hit play and listened to the man's last words, or he tried to listen. Mostly his attention was on Jill, who had slumped against the wall and was quietly hyperventilating.

"I don't know what's going on with me," she smiled nervously when she noticed him watching her, admitting for the first time that something may have been wrong, "My chest hurts and it's hard to breathe."

"Like I said earlier, maybe you should sit this one out," he went over to her only for her to stand up and stagger down the hall.

"Maybe," she coughed and rubbed at her neck as she spoke, "What do you think he meant when he said Veltro was waiting for them?"

"Exactly what it sounded like," he frowned looking back in the direction they'd come from, "That thing we saw in the water, I think it was one of them."

"Oh," her eyes were wide and dark, the rest of her deathly pale. There was no color in her cheeks, her lips were bone white. She could have been dead if not for the way she was shaking, her chest heaving with every breath she took, "Lansdale wouldn't have sent his men here if he didn't think there was still evidence of his involvement down here. We've got to get it."

She rose shakily to her feet and leaning heavily against the wall, staggered forward.

"What about sitting this one out?" Chris put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

"Not when we're so close," she looked back at him and smiled, eyes glassy, pupils dilated to the point where the irises had all but vanished, "I think I can make it a bit farther."

"What happens if we run into whatever was waiting for the FBC?" he let her lean against him to help her stay on her feet.

"You'll take care of it, I know you can."

Together they slowly made their way down the blood streaked hall. There was a warm flickering light ahead, candlelight of all things.

Jill was the first to comment on it and the lumpy shrouded shapes on the table.

"Must have gotten them during dinner," her shrill laughter ending in a coughing fit.

"Yeah…dinner," he held her close as he kept an eye on the bodies on the table, many of them in various states of mutation. Tally marks on the wall made it painfully obvious that, until recently, the majority of them had been survived the ship sinking. They may have been terrorists, but spending a year trapped on a sunken ship, slowly going insane and mutating…it was a fate he wouldn't have wished on anyone.

"Maybe…maybe we should stop for a few," her voice was a ragged whisper, each word a struggle, "I don't feel so good."

"No, not here," he winced as she leaned heavily against him to the point where he was half carrying her, "One more room."

The last thing he wanted was to leave Jill in the room full of bodies, especially since it was all too easy to imagine one of them slithering off the table and oozing towards her while she sat helpless against the wall, too weak to flee or even defend herself. Hopefully whatever was on the other side of the door would be better.

It was.

Compared to the rest of the ship it was relatively well lit, a camera still set up in front of a wall where an enormous Veltro flag had been pinned up. He could hear what sounded like muttered conversation from behind a door ahead. Perfect, they were almost there.

Guiding Jill to a corner of the room he helped her sit down before pulling the flag off the wall. It was relatively dry so it would work as a makeshift blanket.

Jill smiled at him through chattering teeth as he wrapped her up, "Be careful, please."

"Don't worry," he lingered for a moment to kiss her on the forehead, trying not to dwell on how clammy her skin felt or the sour scent of the sweat drenching her, "Just sit tight and wait for me."

"Mm-hmm," she nodded, sinking down into the blanket.

Before opening the door he looked back at her one last time, trying not to think that this might be the last time he saw her alive. He couldn't see her under the blanket, but by the way she was wiggling around he could tell that she was peeling out of her wetsuit. That was a good thing at least. If she got out of her wet clothing she could dry off and maybe warm up some.

The door opened down a long flight of stairs littered with the bodies of FBC. At the end of the stairs was yet another door, this one partially open. The voice he'd heard earlier grew louder, to the point where he was able to make out the occasional word, not that he could actually understand the mad ranting in Italian.

Prepared for monsters, finding himself face to face with a man who was supposed to be dead came as a shock. Jack Norman, leader of Veltro was standing on the far end of the room, staring at him with a crazed smile.

"Morgan! Morgan Lansdale! How dare you cross Veltro?" Norma smiled, looking at him without actually seeing him as he held something up in his right hand, "This is what you seek, is it not? Indeed. This little machine contains the truth, all the truth needed to bring down your entire charade."

The terrorist leader laughed and tossed a PDA to the floor. Cautiously Chris crept forward and took it then slowly backed away. Norman was crazy and all his men were dead, but that didn't mean it would be safe to turn his back to him. There was more to the situation than was immediately apparent, that much was obvious.

Sure enough, the moment he had his hand on the door Norman's eyes came into focus.

"Stop."

And he did. In one of the most foolish moments of his life he stopped to listen to the rantings of a madman.

"Morgan," speaking to a man that wasn't there, Norman held up a vial filled with an unmistakable red liquid, "Behold the terror which you have unleashed."

Chris knew exactly what was going to happen next and still he watched as Norman, of all things, drank the contents of the vial, infecting himself with the t-Abyss virus. Then the terrorist leader fell to his knees and the spell was broken.

Chris ran out the door and made it half way up the stairs before the roar echoed through the ship. The noise was like nothing he'd ever heard before, a rumbling growl that rose up to an impossibly high pitch that seemed to cut into him, making his vision blur and his head ache. A scream from beyond the door at the top of the stairs answered the roar and Chris swore to himself. Leaving Jill behind had been a mistake. There'd been no other option, but it had still been the wrong thing to do.

He rushed to her, or at least he tried. The echoes of the roar still ringing in his ears, a sense of vertigo overwhelmed him and he tripped, barely managing to catch himself before he smashed head first into the steps. As it was his shins hit the thinly carpeted hardwood floor hard enough that the pain knocked the wind out of him.

Behind him the door smashed open and the room was suddenly filled with strobing lights. Squinting, he rolled over and saw…something.

It wasn't like any of the other t-Abyss mutants they'd encountered so far, that much was obvious from the huge, asymmetrical form lumbering towards him, but making out any detail beyond that was impossible. Little flashing lights that dazzled his eyes and left him dizzy covered the B.O.W., spots of sickly bioluminescence in an array of strobing colors made it painful to look at the thing. Something shifted around the B.O.W.'s face and there was a blinding light.

Instinct alone guided him as he rolled out of the way. Splinters rained down on him as the force of the B.O.W.'s blow shattered the wood next to where his legs had been less than a second before. Scrabbling backwards on all fours he was nearly able to make it to the top of the stairs before Norman roared again.

At close range the noise was like the end of the world. Between it and the lights he was deaf and blind, completely at the mercy of the mutated terrorist. All he could do was keep backing up, but even that was a struggle as he fought the feeling of vertigo that threatened to overwhelm him.

With the ringing in his ears he couldn't even hear the B.O.W. thundering towards him, just feel the stairs shaking as it neared.

His back hit the door.

At the same time claws dug into his leg. He was being pulled back down the stairs, away from safety, away from Jill.

He kicked out with his free leg. It was like he'd kicked a brick wall, but he must have hit something important, because he felt something brush past his head, a killing blow that missed, and felt Norman let go.

Another roar, but this one cut off abruptly as the whole ship seemed to shake.

It had fallen down the stairs.

Whatever the hell he'd gotten on it, it must have done some real damage. Maybe he'd gotten its exposed heart, which he was sure he'd seen for a moment. That would have been a really lucky blow, but at this point maybe he was owed that kind of luck.

Struggling to his feet he made it back up the last few steps to the door and slammed it shut behind him.

"Jill?" he called out only to realize that he couldn't hear his own voice over the ringing in his ears. At least his vision was starting to clear, he could see the pile of fabric in the corner of the room where Jill was, bundled up against a wall.

"Jill?" he tried again and this time he was able to faintly hear his own voice, though not her response.

She wasn't moving.

He hurried forward, tripped over his own feet and crawled the rest of the way to her.

The flag was torn to shreds and covered in blood. Worse, he could see tatters of black rubberized fabric, Jill's wetsuit.

Something had attacked her. Drawing his gun he rushed to the room with the dead Veltro members, expecting to see Jill fighting to get away from one of them. They were all exactly where they'd been the first time they'd been through the room. As far as he could tell there weren't even any new streaks of blood on the floor.

Carefully he retraced his steps, keeping an eye out for anything he'd missed on his first pass.

Nothing.

All the way back to the room with the camera and there was nothing, no trace of what had happened to Jill.

On the other side of the closed door he could hear Norman's muffled roars and wondered for a moment why the B.O.W. hadn't pursued him any farther.

Then he heard a shrill scream.

Somehow in the confusion Jill must have gotten past him and into the stairway. He'd closed the door and left her trapped with Norman.

"Jill!"

Another scream answered his cry.

The stairs were a confusion of light and sound.

Norman was on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, crouched over something, blood dripping from his mouth. In the flashing lights he could see Jill's pale, broken body beneath him, covered in ragged claw marks and streaked with blood.

"Chris!"

She was still alive, but barely, her scream more of a pained hiss as she thrashed beneath the B.O.W., trying to hold back his head with shaking hands.

Norman lowered his head, a long thin tongue snaking out from between his lips as he leaned in for the kill, the fin-like growths on his back fluttering with anticipation and in the process revealing a glowing, tumorous organ that pulsed in time with the flashes of light.

"Shoot! Now!" she was barely able to choke out the words, her hands pale and spider like against the sides of Norman's neck.

Something was terribly wrong.

That was the only thought in his mind as he took aim and fired round after round into the Norman's back, praying that his aim was true and that none of them would hit Jill.

Something was wrong, but there was no time to think of what. If he didn't kill Norman quickly he'd –

Norman raised his head and let out another roar, a feeble gurgle compared to what he'd managed before, but it was still enough for Chris to feel a wave of vertigo. He had no choice but to stop and wait for it to pass.

The B.O.W. shuddered and fell still, the luminous organ between his fins flickering feebly before growing dark. Its tongue, tongues actually, twitched and withdrew into its mouth.

"Chris."

Jill was panting, barely able to gasp his name. She must have been crushed by the weight of the carcass on top of her, her hands scrabbling at its sides as it twitched in its death throes.

Then she rolled Norman off of her.

There was blood everywhere, most of it Norman's. His throat had been torn out, his ribcage pulled open and his exposed heart was shredded.

"Oh no," Chris' hands were shaking as he struggled to keep his gun steady.

Norman hadn't been trying to bite Jill as she fought him off, she'd been holding him down while as he struggled to escape from her.

Jill looked straight at him and smiled, her eyes cloudy and unfocused as she rolled over onto her hands and knees.

"Jill…"

At the sound of his voice her smile grew wider, the milky membranes covering her eyes sliding away to the side to reveal her dark gaze, full of predatory intensity. Seeing the gun she tensed, twin rows of red slits starting from behind where her ears should have been and going all the way down the sides of her neck and onto her chest opened, revealing raw muscle and thin spines dripping with cloudy liquid. A tangle of writhing tentacles poured out from between rows of jagged, red stained fangs as her mouth opened wider still, the edges reaching farther back than humanly possible. What he'd seen before hadn't been Norman's tongue, when Jill had bitten out his throat she'd followed up by attempting to choke him from the inside.

Instead of lunging at him she turned to look at Norman, the cords of muscle on her chest rippling as she took a deep breath. He could see dark gray veins pulsing beneath her fish belly white skin.

"Killed it," she hissed, the words escaping from between teeth and barbed tentacles as a gurgling sigh. The spines retracted and red slits closed as she relaxed. With great care, as though it hurt to move, she rose unsteadily to her feet and turned to face him.

Because of the stairs it was hard to tell, but it looked like she was taller than him, or would have been if she was standing straight rather than leaning over to support herself against the banister.

The tentacles slid back into her mouth and the membranes fluttered across her eyes, stopping half way. She looked tired, eyes half closed, brutal features slack.

As he held the gun he realized that he was down to one round, not enough to stop a B.O.W., no matter how good the shot was. Would he be able to reload in time?

"We…" Jill trailed off. Grimacing she covered her face with a hand with too many fingers that were too long. Taking a deep breath she tried again, "Stopped Veltro?"

"Yeah," Chris was still weighing his odds as he stared at her hand. He could count eight fingers, maybe more. They went sideways down her wrist and they didn't exactly stop there just tapered off into claws and spines that went all the way to her elbow, "Veltro's not a problem anymore."

Jill nodded, "Good."

"Yeah."

She staggered another step forward, thin lips pulling back into a grimace, "Lansdale?"

"We've got evidence of his involvement," Chris patted the pocket where he'd put Norman's PDA. Hopefully it contained actual evidence and not just the ramblings of a mad man. If it did, well, there were several computers in the recording room. It was likely that one of them would contain the evidence they needed.

"Good," she was taking the stairs two at a time and the next step brought her up to where he was.

She was too close for him to do anything now. Did he take a chance and back up or try and wait it out? If he went with the second option what exactly was he waiting for?

At that moment Chris' radio crackled to life as director O'Brian's voice came on, "Chris are you there? Respond. Jill's radio is dead and…"

Jill's eyes widened when he tensed, then slid fully closed as she collapsed down next to him.

Yes, she was taller than him, even with the way she was hunched over, arms wrapped around her knees, pressing them tight to her chest. Knobs of exposed bone ran down the center of her back, the skin around them red and inflamed.

"Chris? Respond."

"I'm here," he glanced warily at Jill. She let out a shuddering sigh in response

"Agents Keith and Quint managed to send us the files proving Lansdale's involvement in the whole Terragrigia incident. Were you successful on your end?"

He looked at Norman's carcass, "Yeah, we managed."

Next to him Jill moaned and he shifted away from her as much as he could without actually getting up.

"And Jill, is she…" O'Brian trailed off

"She's…" Chris started to speak only to fall silent when he looked at Jill. What exactly was he going to say?

Next to him Jill lifted her head, slits on her neck flared and she let out a hiss before slamming her fist against the wall hard enough to crack the paneling, "It hurts. Everything hurts!"

How the hell was he supposed to explain what had happened when he didn't fully understand it? What would happen when he received the orders he knew would come? There was a standard procedure for dealing with obviously infected individuals after all. True said procedure was based on the assumption that those individuals would be actively trying to kill you at the time, but what else was there? It would be a mercy killing, hell, during bad times it was something that the two of them had discussed. If one of them ended up infected the other was supposed to kill them rather than let them become a monster. Neither of them had ever figured that it would be a promise that they'd ever have to make good on.

He stared at Jill and Jill stared back, dark eyes unreadable.

"Chris?" O'Brian spoke quietly, his tone full of gentle understanding, "Are you okay? I'm going to send a team in to get you out. You've been through a lot. Once you've had the chance to rest you can explain everything that happened. I just need you to hold on until we can get there."

O'Brian thought Jill was dead. For some reason this struck him as unbearably funny and before he could stop himself or turn off the radio he found himself laughing uncontrollably.

It was painful laughing so hard, but he couldn't stop, even to catch his breath, not even when he started to slide down the stairs.

Long, clawed fingers with too many joints wrapped around his arms, pulling him back into place and, when he proved unable to sit up on his own, Jill pulled him onto her lap and held him tight against her chest. It was all hard muscle and twisted bone. He could feel things twitching beneath her skin, newly grown muscles struggling to work. Whispering wordless reassurances, Jill ran her fingers through his hair until laughter gave way to sobs.


	18. The Enemy of my Enemy

**Summary:** Two BSAA agents investigate a mysterious facility. Nothing exceptional happens.

 **Characters:** Original OCs

 **Notes:** Originally this was supposed to be the introductory part of a larger piece, but I couldn't make it work. I saved the parts that worked and made this little piece. Someday I might have a go at the larger piece again, but I'll need to figure out a plot for it first.

o0o

The pair of BSAA operatives stood at the end of the dock, open and vulnerable to any attack that might come, staring at the message carved into the wood.

"So, I guess we're not the first ones here," Blazedale stated the obvious in a poor attempt at humor.

"Yeah" Shaw muttered under his breath, trying to decide how he felt about what he was seeing. As he worked at making up his mind he read over the words yet again, though there was nothing more to them than the obvious.

'THEY'RE MAKING B.O.W.S – CONTACT BSAA'

The message was simple, but ominous. Of all the things he'd expected to encounter on the little island this was so far from any of them that he didn't know what to make of it. B.O.W.s were something he'd expected, a written warning about them, carved into the wooden dock in jagged letters, wasn't.

Adding to the mystery was the phone number that followed. Whoever dialed it would find themselves ringing the phone in the office of the former director of the BSAA, a number that wasn't given out to just anyone. A call coming into that number would have to be investigated, no matter how vague the explanation or strange the situation, so whoever had left it had clearly wanted the BSAA to end up there.

There was no reason for the note to be there unless someone expected the island to be discovered by someone who didn't know better, but then why hadn't they contacted the BSAA themselves? The phone number they had provided made it clear that they knew more about the organization than the average civilian would.

Could it be a plea for help from someone trapped on the island? A trap in which he and Blazedale were taking the bait? There was no logic apparent behind the note, making it menacing despite the perfectly sound advice it offered.

It was a mystery that, as much as he wanted it solved, Shaw had the feeling he'd be much happier if someone else were the one to actually solve it.

"Do you think we should call?" Blazedale laughed at his own wit.

Shaw rolled his eyes. The two of them had been working together for nearly a year and, while Blazedale was a good guy, absolutely brilliant when it came to dealing with B.O.W.s, his sense of humor and how quick he was to laugh at his own jokes was grating at times. Still, it could have been a lot worse. Shaw's previous partner had been a woman who had been the very definition of overcompensation. He'd been glad when she'd requested to be reassigned, citing his lack of ambition as the reason. Blazedale's bad jokes were far easier to deal with. It had been chance and a last minute good idea had thrown the two of them together, but Shaw figured that if they survived they'd go far. Just because he was aiming to get promoted into a position that was well away from the frontlines and active combat didn't mean that he wasn't ambitious and he was glad that Blazedale understood that.

Unfortunately, at the moment at least, that goal seemed a long way off.

The two of them had been sent in instead of a squad from one of the closer branches because, after recent large scale events, it had been deemed necessary that the BSAA have operatives specializing in incidents occurring at sea. The island was hardly more than a mile across at its widest, which was enough for it to count as 'at sea', that and the fact that it was located over a hundred miles from the nearest officially inhabited location. All in all, it was an unusual location for a bioresearch facility as far as Shaw was concerned, though not the strangest one out there.

After getting out of the army he'd worked security on a lab a mile or so away from a major tourist destination before getting a job with the BSAA. The lab had been on an island which was most likely what got him chosen for the mission, because there wasn't anything else in his admittedly unexceptional record that would explain it. It was still better than Blazedale's qualifications, which were, as far as he could figure, having a captain's license and a fondness for wreck diving. Shaw understood that the BSAA took volunteers where it could get them, but there were times when he felt that the guys running the show were stretching things a bit too far. At the same time he could understand why the two of them had been sent in. Anyone else would have been overkill.

When there were actual outbreaks taking place in Eastern Europe and the cleanup in China was still ongoing the BSAA couldn't really spare anyone to investigate a small island where any danger to the public was minimal. Hell, it was only by chance that it had been found in the first place.

The facility had been discovered by a group of graduate students and their professor on a research cruise. They'd taken a dozen or so pictures of a mysterious concrete bunker of a building, complete with what looked to be a pair of docks and possibly even an airstrip, on an island that was supposed to be uninhabited.

In the wake of everything that had happened in the past decade everyone was quick to assume it was some sort of bioresearch facility despite any real evidence. As such the BSAA was called in to investigate what was most likely to be an abandoned bug-out location belonging to some eccentric millionaire.

At least that had been the general assumption until, on the off chance that it turned out to be something more and that they would need to get in before thrill seekers or outside agents got there and made trouble of one sort or another, an aerial survey was conducted and brought back photos of over a dozen bodies scattered around the facility. Four of those bodies had decidedly abnormal physiology, enough so that it was determined that they were B.O.W.s, likely a hunter variant.

From there the positions of the bodies and their state of decay was telling. The suspected hunters had died around the same time judging by the condition they were in and were all positioned near the coast. The human bodies were mostly located closer to the building, sprawled out as though they had died running. It was hard to tell, but by the looks of it the humans had died over the course of several days. They had been fleeing something, their goal obvious, a small yacht docked at the newer of the island's two docks. What they must have not known was that escape was impossible. The boat had been sunk, leaving them with no way off the island.

The strangest thing though, at least in Shaw's mind once he'd been shown the pictures, was the state of the bodies. The B.O.W.s all looked to have died violent deaths, their limbs ripped off and scattered in all directions, some of them were inexplicably charred looking, bodies twisted like driftwood along the shore. This was a sharp contrast to the humans who appeared relatively intact, undisturbed except by the flocks of birds that gathered on the island.

No one knew what had killed them or if it was still there which meant that the two of them were going into a totally unknown situation. It could have been worse though, that was what Shaw kept telling himself and Blazedale kept reminding him. Besides, the island's small size and remote location made it an ideal location for their first mission alone together, a nice, relatively safe, test run. The facility was small enough that there was no risk of zombie hordes and the grass and scattered palm trees meant there was no place for anything unpleasant to sneak up on them.

"We're gonna have to move eventually," Blazedale said at last, looking up from the writing to stare out across the seemingly deserted island.

"I know," Shaw frowned. He'd hoped that whatever was on the island, if it was still there, would have approached them. Having the monster come for you was always less nerve wracking than having to go out looking for it.

Their first objective was a simple one, make it to the nearest of the human bodies and see if it was possible to determine what had killed them. A simple enough goal and one that would hopefully help keep them from rushing in blind as so often happened when working in the BSAA.

The body wasn't anything impressive, just a patch of color against the pale beach grass. Birds and insects had been through with their work and there was little left of the individual other than a skeleton in a stained green uniform. Despite the condition of the body it was easy to figure out what had happened to them. The skull had been completely shattered, but with the body little more than a skeleton there was no way to tell anything more than that.

No, that wasn't quite true. There was no real damage to the uniform they were wearing or any indication of other injuries. Whatever had killed them had done so quickly and efficiently, with one hit, and then left without doing anything else to the body.

Given how little there was left it was impossible to be certain, but Shaw had the feeling that there hadn't even been a struggle.

"What the fuck?" Blazedale walked in a slow circle around the body, "Seriously, what the actual fuck? First the writing on the dock, now this. I never thought I'd be saying this, but I'd be a lot happier if the guy'd been mauled, or there wasn't a mark on him, like he'd been killed by some virus."

Shaw fought back the urge to ask what made a fuck actual. Instead he made up his mind about what their next move should be, "One of the B.O.W.s shouldn't be far from here. Let's get a look at it before we do anything else. That way we'll at least have some clue of what we might be up against."

If Blazedale didn't like the way Shaw tended to take charge he had yet to bring it up. As far as Shaw was concerned one of them had to and he was the one with the most actual experience since Blazedale had been a civilian before joining the BSAA. He hadn't asked how things had ended up the way they had, with Blazedale in a combat role rather than a support one, because he had the feeling that he wouldn't like the answer. The BSAA had been desperate for recruits after the events in Europe and China, his previous partner had been proof of that.

Before leaving the body Shaw took one last look around, as though there might be some clue as to what had happened, some hint that he'd missed of whatever threat was waiting for them.

Nothing, just the beach grass swaying slightly in the wind and birds circling overhead.

The dead B.O.W. was a short, tense walk away.

Shaw couldn't shake the feeling that there was something wrong with the situation and Blazedale kept turning around to look over his shoulder, jumping at every little sound. The two of them were making it worse for each other. Realizing this Shaw took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down, or at least act like he wasn't worried. It was easier said than done since Blazedale's looking around made him want to do the same, just in case something was sneaking up on them. Except in his experience B.O.W.s didn't sneak, thy charged and smashed through everything in their way. So there was nothing for him to be worried about, not that the thought did much to reassure.

Just above the tideline the B.O.W.'s mangled form lay in a patch of churned up, bloodstained sand. One of its limbs, a twisted three fingered claw, had been torn completely off and tossed several meters from the body. By Shaw's best guess the thing would have been about four feet tall, with a top heavy build and long, simian arms. Probably a Hunter then and not a particularly well formed one, given how its remaining arm was an irregular, clubbed mass ending in a collection of knobby protrusions. The condition of the body also suggested that it wasn't a particularly durable one either, lacking scales or anything else to give the birds and crabs picking it over any difficulty. Its chest was caved in and there appeared to be several ragged puncture wounds around its neck and shoulders.

Given its state of decay it was hard to tell, but it also looked like the carcass was slightly charred, possibly hinting at one of the increasingly common thermogenic strains.

Thermogenic, that was a word Shaw wished he'd never learned. He didn't know exactly what it meant other than how there were some B.O.W.s that would catch fire or explode when injured. The thought of any of those viruses being used as a base for Hunters was frightening given how unpredictable many of them were. The last thing he wanted to have to deal with was exploding Hunters.

"I'm liking this less and less," Blazedale wasn't even looking at the dead B.O.W. Instead he was staring at the ground several feet away, "These aren't Hunter tracks."

The tracks in question were a series of strange sweeping marks and lines in the sand as though someone were dragging their feet across the ground. Wind and time had mostly erased them, making it hard to say if they were even tracks at all, except for the set of parallel lines moving directly away from the dead hunter.

"So what are we looking at?" Shaw wondered out loud, "A fight between a Hunter and an unknown B.O.W.? Because that's not too much of a surprise. Hunters go after anything that moves. Isn't that why they've mostly stopped making them?"

He wasn't sure why he was asking. Blazedale knew a bit more than the regulation requirements about .s, what he called a hobbyist's interest, but neither of them actually knew what might be out there.

Neither of them knew what they were getting into.

It was an uncomfortably common situation in the BSAA.

"There's other reasons," Blazedale shrugged, "But yeah. The Veronica strain makes better monsters and in a few years it'll probably be the C-virus that everyone's using. What they've got here is anyone's guess. The real question is what did all this."

Shaw closed his eyes, trying to make sense of the latest development. The man had been shot, the Hunter killed by a mystery B.O.W. There was one little detail his mind kept getting stuck on, one aspect that had to be important because of how unusual it was, "From the pictures the only things that did any eating were birds and crabs. The bodies are all mostly intact and there aren't any scattered bits other than that arm."

"Exactly," Blazedale frowned, "We've got a B.O.W. that's killing Hunters without eating them. It's strong enough to fight them no problem," he kicked sand in the direction of the severed arm, the ragged stump showing that it had been torn off, "But it's killing them quickly. None of the mess that you usually see when B.O.W.s go at it."

"You're thinking a Tyrant then?" Shaw shuddered at the thought. Tyrants took a lot of resources to make, not just money and time, but scientific and medical knowhow. There was a reason that, as prized as they were, they hardly ever showed up anywhere. If there was a Tyrant on the island the whole situation was far more dangerous than he'd imagined. There was no way the two of them could manage against one of those things, but with no proof he couldn't radio in for backup and then wait for help to arrive.

"These tracks are deep," Blazedale gestured at the lines in the sand, "So we know it's big, but Tyrants are supposed to be human looking and those don't look like they were made by any person. 'cause of how strange they are it's hard to tell just how big the thing is though, I'm going to guess human sized or larger, but not much heavier because of the distance between the tracks and their depth and because that's usually the safe bet. It's big, smart, and it doesn't eat what it kills. Combine all that with scientists getting shot trying to get away and the message someone left."

Roughly human sized probably meant that it wasn't a Tyrant, at least not a proper one, and Blazedale had a point about the tracks being strange, which also went towards ruling out the possibility of a Tyrant. He'd heard stories about some crazy things being done with the C-virus though, and that shit was everywhere.

"So…" Shaw paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts before trying to figure out where Blazedale's line of thinking might be going, "Maybe they were field testing some new type of intelligent B.O.W.s here and some of the researchers made an attempt at mutiny?"

The shitty Hunter made more sense that way, if it were just there to give a larger, more dangerous B.O.W. a workout.

At this point they were both stalling and he knew it, but he wasn't in any hurry to approach the facility, not when there might be something inside waiting for them, something that could kill Hunters with little difficulty.

Blazedale shrugged, "That's the only thing that works, but if that's the case the test is already over and done with, otherwise we'd have encountered something."

It did work, Shaw wasn't going to deny that. It even explained the boat sunk at the one dock, mostly. It had been done to prevent the mutineers from escaping. Except why were the dead bodies scattered across the island? If it had been part of a group effort shouldn't they have been together? Unless they scattered after they were attacked. That would work.

Realizing that there was no point in further procrastination the pair began their cautious approach of the facility.

Half way there Blazedale froze and stared off into the distance.

"What is it?" Shaw whispered nervously, as though that would help if there really was something out there. Unless the thing didn't have eyes anything they could see would have probably already seen them. If it was smart it might have even been stalking them. The thing was, as far as he could tell, there was nothing out there, just grass and sand and, beyond that, water.

"Not sure," Blazedale shrugged, "Thought I saw something near the tideline over there. Probably just light reflecting off the water or broken glass washed up on the beach."

Even so they remained motionless for several minutes until Blazedale shook his head, "It's all this nothing that's happening getting to me."

They made it the rest of the way to the building without incident, which, given the situation, was unexpected.

Several of the building's windows had been broken from the outside which only made sense if something had escaped and then tried to get back in. All the doors were closed though. Closed and locked, as was revealed upon closer inspection. The mutiny theory still worked if the windows had been broken during the fighting or if it had been caused by the Hunters attempting to get inside and get at the researchers. It made sense, but it still felt like kind of a stretch. The Hunters were released for the mystery B.O.W. to kill so no real precautions would have been taken with them. Except there were no Hunters anywhere near the building. They'd all been closer to the shore.

As they tested the last door and found it, like all the others, to be locked Blazedale shook his head, "This doesn't feel right."

Shaw nodded, "Yeah, I get the feeling that we're more than a little too late with this one. We've just got to hope that they left something behind in all the confusion. The window on the west side is big enough and low enough to the ground for us to climb in no problem."

"Or didn't leave anything behind," Blazedale said, looking back in the direction they had come from, "Maybe you're rubbing off on me, but I'd rather not find any surprises in there."

Completing their lap of the building they continued on to the window in question, like all the others it had been broken.

Blazedale peered inside and then looked back at Shaw "If there's anything left outside we'd have seen it by now and if there's anything left inside I want to see if we can draw it out rather than go in blind."

Shaw wasn't going to argue with that logic and motioned for him to do as he saw fit.

Blazedale's actions caught him off guard even though they shouldn't have. Leaning in through the broken window he called out in a fairly good impression of a gameshow host calling a contestant down from the audience, "Hello! Any of you ugly fuckers left in here do us a favor and come on out!"

His voice echoed down the empty halls, then, after it completely faded another voice called back, "Is it gone?"

The two of them did a double take, Blazedale following up by swearing loudly. Of all the things they'd been expecting, hearing a frantic sounding female voice call back to them wasn't one of them.

Blazedale was the first to recover, "It might still be a trap. Remember, intelligent B.O.W.s."

Shaw hadn't even considered that. The idea of B.O.W.s being able to talk had been mentioned in a few training videos, but mostly in the context that, just because something could talk, didn't mean you should hesitate or try to reason with it. The idea that someone would try to reason with one of those things made no sense to him, but it took all sorts and there had to be a reason behind the warning.

Shaw took a step back before Blazedale shouted back into the building, "Are you alone in there?"

"No, there are five of us left, but my English is better."

Now that she'd said as much Shaw realized that the woman did have an accent, though not one he could place. Then again, given the number of languages and all their regional dialects spoken near the area they were in that was hardly a surprise.

"Can you get out?"

There was no immediate response. Shaw listened and thought that maybe he could hear the faint sounds of an argument.

A different voice responded this time, male and distinctly afraid, "Is he dead?"

Shaw and Blazedale exchanged a look. There were a lot of dead people and things out there.

More arguing followed, much louder and distinctly angry sounding. A door slammed somewhere in the building. Cautious footsteps could be heard heading in their direction.

Shaw chanced a look inside and saw a disheveled, desperate looking man in a lab coat was making his way towards them. He peered out at them, smiled and shouted something back to his companions. Turning to the agents he shrugged, "We worried you were him."

He hated answers that he never asked for that only raised more questions.

Four equally harried looking scientists emerged from the darkness of the compound, all of them glancing around nervously as though they expected something to burst in and kill them all. When nothing happened the scientists allowed themselves to be helped out the window.

Again their behavior was curious, they all looked ready to scatter or hit the deck. Every time the wind blew causing the grass to rustle they winced and ducked down.

"What the hell happened here?" Blazedale asked the question that had existed since first seeing the note on the dock.

The five scientists immediately began babbling a disjointed tale of their ordeal.

"The guards were killed first," the sole woman of the group began, "By the time they realized what was going on half of them were dead. When they didn't answer their radios the director had the rest go out and look for them. They'd all been shot once to the chest or head."

"He sank the boat first!" the man who had been the first to emerge interjected, "We had no way off."

"So we let the subjects out," the woman continued, "Because we weren't getting any help unless we could flush him out. We figured that it would be a good test for them. One by one we lost transmission from their trackers, or they stopped moving."

A second man cut in at this point, "Anyone close to the windows was shot."

Blazedale was looking nervously over his shoulder at this point and Shaw could feel the start of a headache. The scientists were still talking, but he ignored them as he tried to reconcile what he was hearing with what he had seen.

"It might still have been a test run," Shaw said slowly, inviting Blazedale to add his own ideas, "A rival of theirs trying to kill two birds with one stone. They dropped in a Tyrant with a high powered rifle off and…What did it look like?"

The scientists all stared at him. A man who had been relatively silent until this point spoke up, "If anyone saw it they never got the chance to say."

The others murmured in fearful agreement.

Either sneaky or invisible then, not impossible, but unlikely. There were some strange B.O.W.s out there and a unique, custom creation wasn't out of the question.

Blazedale shook his head, by the look on his face trying and rejecting a number of ideas before speaking, "We didn't have any trouble so we know it's gone. Still, I think we should let someone else worry about the details and just get out of here. And…"

He didn't say outright that Shaw was wrong, but it was obvious by the pained look on his face that he wanted to correct him about one or more parts of the explanation he had given. The thing was, it worked well enough for an official report and it made sense. Nearly everything fit. Given a bit more time he could make it all work nice and neat. A tidy, slightly improvised report was better than a bunch of loose ends, more satisfying and looked better.

Blazedale was the one who spoke up, bringing up the one huge hole in it all, "What about the note?"

The scientists all looked at him blankly.

"The director shut down communications when things went bad, the guards smashed all the radios but theirs," the woman spoke cautiously, unsure if the answer she was giving was to the question that had been asked, "That way we couldn't call for help."

"Drop it. We're getting out of here," Shaw said quickly. He didn't want any more conversation, he wanted time to think. If the mystery B.O.W. was still around it might strike at any moment. There was no reason to think it was, but there was also no reason to think that it wasn't.

Other than the scientists jumping at every little sound and movement in the grass the walk back to the old dock was uneventful. There wasn't enough room on the boat they had come in on to take all of them and the scientists quickly realized this.

"Don't worry," Shaw said quickly, "We're going to radio in for a larger boat to pick you up and stay here until they arrive."

One of the group looked like he might protest, but the others silenced him. They must have figured that they were safe and that the wait would give them a chance to get their story together. Probably by the time they were all picked up they'd all be lab techs who never did anything more than clean up after the real scientists, who never explained any of what they were doing and, conveniently, were all dead and unable to disagree.

Sure enough they started talking quietly amongst themselves.

Shaw didn't care. He just wanted to get off the island and let someone else sort things out. Yeah, he'd probably get yelled at for not properly clearing the facility or the island, but something about it gave him the creeps. Since arriving he'd had the feeling that they were being watched, which made no sense. If he were to be honest with himself, none of it made any sense and the last thing he had wanted to do was go from end to end of the island looking for who knew what. They wasn't equipped for that sort of thing. Just to be sure he turned to Blazedale, "If there was something left here how would you find it?"

Blazedale looked out at the small stand of palm trees at the one end of the island then at the compound, "On a little, isolated place like this I'd pick a spot and let it find me."

"Do you think it's still here?"

He stared down at the message carved onto the dock, "No. The way they described what happened the thing would have done something already if it was still here. Even if it is my money's on it going for the scientists first."

"And?" Shaw kicked at the planks at his feet.

"No clue," Blazedale stared at the note, "It's the one thing that I can't make fit."

"The only one?" Shaw gave him a wry smile.

He shrugged, "Depends on what I want to assume or ignore."

"Figures."

Nothing happened in the time it took for the boat to arrive and pick their captives up.

o0o

During the weeks that followed the facility was investigated and the island searched from end to end. The only thing noteworthy about it was that the effort was purely without incident. No trace of the mystery B.O.W. was found.


	19. Life, Love, Friendship and Lemons

**Summary:** Prior to the events of the games, Wesker thinks over what's happened and what's bound to happen.

 **Characters:** Albert Wesker, William Birkin, mentions of other characters

 **Notes:** My attempt at looking at Wesker while he was still human and possibly less insane. It started with me thinking that he couldn't have been uniformly horrible since he'd been friends with William Birkin and Jake's mother clearly remained fond of him after they separated. This fic grew from those thoughts.

o0o

Albert Wesker looked over the printouts on various projects, some of which he wasn't technically supposed to know about. He'd always been suspicious by nature and recently he'd started looking deeper into what Spencer hadn't told him, didn't want to know. What he found didn't bode well.

Umbrella was hemorrhaging money, its legitimate business barely covering all the little side projects Spencer had going on. If not for his possessing more money than God, and nowhere near the foresight, the whole mess would be going under.

And a mess was what it was.

Figuring out the exact moment it had all started to fall apart was difficult because there were so many moments it could have been. Getting rid of Marcus was as good a point as any to blame, but it had merely been a symptom of an underlying condition, a rot that went to the core of the whole organization and considering Umbrella an organization was a joke at this point. It was little more than a collection of disjointed projects under a crumbling façade of legitimacy. Sooner or later it was all going to come crumbling down and he was already getting things in order for when it did.

The Tyrant project was the only profitable venture Umbrella was involved in and Spencer was letting it fall to the wayside for no reason that Wesker could comprehend. Though it was allowed to continue, no real effort was being made to advance it. Promising researchers were constantly being pulled away to work on dead end projects and funding was being diverted seemingly at random. If there was a method to Spencer's madness he couldn't see it. It was all he could do to keep the projects relevant to his own interests receiving funds. Relevant to his interests and…

He wondered if William would ever know that the reason the G-virus project was keeping afloat was because he'd been fudging data for months now.

William had finally started getting results and they'd looked promising, which was the problem. They only looked promising. The G strain worked wonders on its host, but it was too unstable, something that became obvious under scrutiny.

It had been William's project for so long that he was blind to its flaws, a flaw that he'd always possessed. Just like how he had pictures of his family taped up everywhere in every single damned lab he worked in. Pictures of what, Albert had been informed countless times, was an adorable girl, the most adorable little girl. That was what William saw. What Albert saw was that as the girl in the pictures grew older she smiled less and less. William had a family that he was ignoring, letting fall to the wayside for a stupid, worthless project that was his whole life. Spencer was doing the same, chasing an unknown pipedream. Albert could only hope that he never sank that low.

Maybe Uschi had been right, getting out when she had. During their last conversation, before she'd fled the country she'd begged him to follow, go into hiding with her and start fresh away from Umbrella. She'd hinted that she had something she needed to tell him, that it was urgent, but she couldn't say anything when Umbrella might be listening.

Little did she know, he already knew. Umbrella had the genetic details of all its employees in case it was necessary to harvest specimens locally. The long QT syndrome meant that she'd been safe from that sort of thing, he just wondered how she'd found out about it. He hadn't mentioned it because it would have made things…complicated.

Things between them had already gotten too complicated for his liking by that point.

She had been a complicated woman, complicated and terrifying.

Uschi, ignorant of her condition, had been a constant reminder of mortality. She could have dropped dead in the labs, at home, when they'd been…

He didn't like thinking about her, not when she could have easily died since he'd last seen her. That had helped him keep things compartmentalized after she'd left.

It was why he hadn't followed.

The thought that one day, out of the blue, she might just drop dead and all her plans for the future would mean nothing.

Just like Spencer's.

Things were going to come crashing down, but he would end up on top. He had a plan, multiple plans actually. He knew where the Tyrant was being kept, a way to get data about how it performed in the field, and a buyer lined up for the files on its creation as well as the virus samples necessary to make another.

He'd also gotten William to work on a little side project, unbeknownst to Spencer or any of the others. A modified, tamed version of the viruses they'd been working on. There wouldn't be spontaneous mutations, just telomere regeneration and reactivation of stem cells in response to trauma. Immortality in a vial and William was getting close to success.

It was a last gift before the two of them went their separate ways. Once it was all over they'd never see each other again, something he'd insisted on because it would be too dangerous. William didn't know how to survive, no clue of the measures that would be necessary once Umbrella was taken down and every single rotten thing was dragged into the open. He'd tried to warn him, a favor to an old friend, but he didn't think that William understood.

After all they'd been through together William was so naïve and far too devoted to his work to get out in time.

It was a shame, but Albert understood that there was nothing he could do without jeopardizing himself.

Once it was over and he had his money he'd start fresh. He wasn't sure where or how, but there were plenty of other bioresearch companies and interested private individuals across the globe that would rush to fill the vacuum left by Umbrella's implosion. He'd pick one and give it a hand, rising to power and continuing the standard of living that he'd become so accustomed to.

Maybe it was a sign that he'd grown soft, but having been on the top for so long he intended to stay there.

He wasn't sure of exactly what he'd do in the long term, but if William's virus worked there would be plenty of time for long term planning.

Albert looked at the papers he'd been leafing through, looking at without seeing.

It was late, he was tired and…

Footsteps behind him, a shuffling stomp. William when he thought he was being quiet.

"I thought everyone was gone for the night."

Albert leaned back in his chair, "The same."

"But since you're here," William gave him a sickly smile, "I thought you might want to be informed that progress is occurring at an accelerated rate. The current state of disarray means that the usual channels are no longer necessary for the requisition of certain vital resources."

He struggled not to laugh at his friend's interesting way of saying that he was stealing what he needed. It seemed like William was finally getting the idea of things, "When life gives you lemons."

"Life," William smirked, "Never gave anyone lemons. Life gave citron trees and bitter oranges and man decided that he wanted lemons. Through cross pollination and selective breeding we gave life lemons."

Albert stood up and stretched, "And what if life gives you a pedantic little jackanape?"

"Jackanapes," William said softly.

"What?"

"You forgot the terminal 's', the word is 'jackanapes," William stared down at his shoes with a look of intense determination.

"You're absolutely…" Albert struggled to keep a straight face, but in the light of how absurd the situation was, he found he couldn't. Before he could regain his composure he burst out laughing.

"You must be delirious from exhaustion," William said, genuinely concerned, "I'll assist you in getting –"

Albert waved him away, "No I'm fine. I was dozing off when you came by."

"I still think it's necessary –"

"No," he grew firm, using his 'talking to insubordinate subordinates' tone, "You've been here at least as long as I have. Annette probably thinks I've kidnapped you. Go home."

"B-but my work," William stammered, "And at this hour public transportation has ceased.

"Your work can wait," putting a hand on his shoulder Albert started pushing him to the door, "We can compromise though, I'll drive you home and then get some sleep myself."

Maybe he was getting soft, but he supposed allowing himself one friend was a harmless indulgence.

Just like the time he spent with Uschi.

A harmless indulgence.

He just had to keep telling himself that.


	20. Sins of the Fathers

**Summary:** An RE6 AU where things don't go as well for Jake and Sherry as they do in the game after they get captured by NeoUmbrella.

 **Characters:** Jake Muller, Sherry Birkin

 **Notes:** Jake and Sherry are my favorite pairing in the whole series. I'd been wanting to do this particular fic for the longest time, but I just couldn't get it to work until now. After all this time I'm pretty happy with how it came out and might end up writing a bit more following this version of events.

o0o

Of all the things Jake had been ready for when the door to his cell swung open there being no one on the other side hadn't been one of them. His very first thought was that it had to be a dream because the whole place had a sort of dream like quality to it.

White walls, white light, white everything and nothing ever changed. He received his meals at the same time every day, blood samples were taken at regular intervals. The only break in the routine was that on occasion he would be injected with who knew what, and that was the entirety of what happened. The injections never did anything as far as he could tell so after the first month or so he'd stopped worrying, about the injections at least. There were plenty of other things for him to worry about, such as what was happening in the world outside.

It had been one hundred and fifty four days by his count, and he was sure that he had missed some, since he and Sherry had been captured. Anger had given way to frustration had given way to tedium and after all that time he knew no more about what was going on than he had when he first woke up in the blindingly white room.

He would have thought that being Umbrella's captive would have been terrifying, but it wasn't, not on its own at least. Waiting and being helpless wasn't a walk in the park by any means, but at the same time he understood how much worse his situation could have been. He just hoped that Sherry was okay. There was no reason for him to worry about her, but it helped break up the monotony and the more he thought about it the more he decided she was kind of cute, in a stuck up, naïve sort of way.

On several occasions he'd attempted to start a conversation with the guards in a desperate attempt to learn what was going on, but that hadn't worked. He could barely string a sentence together in Mandarin and the guards did a pretty good job of pretending they didn't speak anything else even though at least two of them clearly weren't Chinese. Combine that with the fact that that it was a coin toss as to whether the guard outside his cell would be a human or a J'avo and it wasn't worth the risk. The human ones would just ignore him, the J'avo were more likely to come in and beat the shit out of him for sport. He wasn't a pushover by any means and could hold his own in a fight, just not against something that was basically a B.O.W.

On the bright side the J'avo were more likely to talk between themselves when they were by his cell, meaning that he was able to overhear some fairly interesting conversations. He'd managed to pick up enough Mandarin to follow simple conversations and thanks to repetition and tone there were times he could take a guess about what was being discussed. What he'd managed to understand wasn't comforting. The name Wesker mentioned too many times for it to be coincidence.

Crazy as it might have been, he hoped that it was because Wesker had somehow managed to survive and was behind all of this, because otherwise the implications were even more unpleasant. Sherry had tracked him down for a reason, had known that he'd be immune to the latest viral super weapon. It was something he didn't want to think about. Of course trying not to think about it only made him turn endless possibilities over in his mind as he stared at the blank white walls of his cell.

He knew his mother had been to America, worked there for a length of time, and that his father had been an American she'd met at her job. She hadn't talked much about where she'd been or what she'd done, which made it too easy to imagine the worst case scenarios, something he wasn't comfortable doing. He wasn't stupid enough to think that his mother had been a saint before she died, but there were some things he was sure she wouldn't have done. Besides, she'd reassured him countless times that his father had been a good man, that it had been all the trouble in America that kept him from finding them. There had been no reason to assume anything.

Except he was still alive and sane, not running around as some bug-eyed J'avo after unknowingly injecting himself with the C-virus. What were the odds that he of all people would be immune to it? Good enough that someone in the American government had had been betting on it, sending out a human B.O.W. to find him. Because that's what Sherry was, wasn't she? She might have looked like a little girl, but he'd seen firsthand what she was capable of.

Then there was what the woman who'd captured them had said.

Once he found Sherry, if he found Sherry, she was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

And now that his cell door was open there just might be a chance for it.

Expecting a trick, some strange test by Umbrella, he cautiously pushed the door the rest of the way open and was genuinely surprised to find that the hall was empty.

It meant nothing of course, they could be watching his every move through cameras, but that was no reason for him to not at least try.

He made his way down the hall, the same unrelenting white as his cell, more carefully than was typical for him, but after spending half a year trapped in one room he had good reason to be cautious.

There were dozens of doors in the hall, all opened and leading to cells like his, all empty which was probably for the best. If there'd been other captives there was no guarantee that they be friendly or even human. This was Umbrella after all.

At the same time he was disappointed that Sherry was nowhere to be found. It was stupid for him to have hoped for as much. Not even Umbrella was stupid enough to keep two high value prisoners close enough to talk to each other, even if they were locked away twenty-four seven.

Still, he was frustrated that she wasn't there, ready and raring to go like she'd been when he'd first met her. It was crazy how much he'd thought about her since they'd been captured, and not just because she'd been the last friendly face that he'd seen. There was no time to worry about any of that now though, not when there was a chance that he might actually be able to get out.

Ignoring the empty cells he hurried to the end of the hall and, hoping for the best, turned right.

No more cells, just a short hall that dead ended at a door that clearly lead to a stairwell. Again he had to make a choice and hope for the best when he decided to go down. If he was in one of the building's basement levels then he was screwed, but he hoped that he'd be able to figure that out before it became a problem.

Going down one flight he left the stairwell, hoping that he'd find himself somewhere he would be able to gain his bearings. Instead he found himself in another plain, white hall. This one was slightly different looking than the one in the cellblock, something he decided to take as a good sign. There was paneling on the walls and the ceiling tiles were sound dampening ones.

The first door he checked was to an empty room, the next had a white table and white chairs of a cold, industrial design. He wouldn't even be able to break a leg off one of them to use as an improvised weapon, so he closed the door and moved on.

After that he found another empty room, a storage room and a rock garden of all things, followed by a room full of computers, all passcode locked, everything in the same white on white on white.

Maybe his escape really was a dream and he was about to wake up on a table, coming out of anesthesia after some horrible experiment.

The sound of voices and hurried footsteps in the distance made him duck into the nearest room, which turned out to be a server room. Short of pushing something over on whoever came to get him there was nothing he could use as a weapon. There wasn't even anywhere he could hide.

Less than five minutes out and he was about to get captured yet again.

The voices were getting closer.

They sounded human, so maybe he had a chance. If he got the jump on one of them and managed to wrestle his gun from him he might be able to take out the second before they got the chance to alert the rest of the guards to his location.

If there were only two of them that would work. Just because he only heard two voices didn't mean there were only two of them.

Straining to hear how many sets of footsteps there were he waited, hardly daring to breathe.

Any second now they'd open the door and he'd have to act. The least he could do was put up a fight.

They were right outside the door where they stopped.

Rapid back and forth conversation followed, too fast for him to catch anything of importance. An alarm went off somewhere and they took off running.

Their voices faded into the distance.

It wasn't him that they were after, which meant one of several things. He wasn't the only one to have escaped, Sherry had gotten out as well and was causing trouble elsewhere in the facility.

Funny that his first thought was of Sherry when it was equally likely that some sort of monster had gotten out when the doors opened and was going on a rampage through the place. There were other options though. Someone might have come to rescue him, probably whoever Sherry worked for because he couldn't think of anyone who would want to come after him, unless Sherry hadn't been full of shit when talking about how valuable his blood was for making vaccines. Umbrella had certainly taken enough of it.

Jake didn't like the implications of that. There wasn't too big a market for zombie viruses, but vaccines and treatments for them where in high demand, even though most of them didn't work worth a damn. On the other hand, the Americans had been willing to take a big gamble going after him, which had to mean something. It was possible that a whole new age of biological warfare was starting, with him at the center of it all and he wasn't going to make a dime off of it. If only Umbrella had made him an offer instead of kidnapping him. Then again, it was a lot easier for them to take what they needed than it would have been to get into a bidding war with the American government.

So maybe Sherry's employers had tracked him down again and were coming to get him. The idea that he was valuable enough that Sherry's employers would attempt to rescue him was an interesting one, but not one that meant anything good for him. Most likely he'd be trading one set of captors for another in that case and the new ones would probably be far less accommodating. As captivity went what he'd been through wasn't too bad, it still sucked, but it beat the hell out of being chained up in a glorified closet or dumped in what amounted to a hole in the ground, both of which had been possibilities. Umbrella had more money than common sense, which had worked fairly well for him up to this point. Three meals a day, an actual bed, showers every three days and as long as he didn't antagonize the J'avo, relatively little abuse.

What it came down to was, even if someone had come to rescue him, it was best for him not to wait for them to find him.

With that in mind he left the server room and continued to explore. Maybe he'd find a weapon, maybe he'd find a way out, either one was fine by him.

The very next room he found was the jackpot, a locker room. White lockers, of course, but breaking the pattern of things they had ordinary master locks, not keypads or locks built into the doors.

It was something that might actually work for him.

He walked up and down the rows, giving each lock a tug. There was always a chance that one of the locks had stuck after being closed and enough of them were in bad enough condition that one sticking seemed a very real possibility. He was willing to guess that the lockers belonged to security, which gave him even more reason to try and get into at least one.

It had to be security because so many of the lockers had dented doors, something he chose to attribute to the shit impulse control that J'avo showed. They liked yelling and punching things when they got pissed off, doors, walls, him, each other, and they got pissed off a lot. Over time they'd also gotten increasingly common, the human guards either leaving or being infected.

Halfway down the third row he struck gold, a lock too twisted to even close.

Inside was a loaded gun, some shitty mostly plastic looking piece of Chinese garbage, because apparently just because Umbrella could afford the best of everything didn't mean that they were going to give it to B.O.W.s. More importantly there was a uniform that looked like it would fit him, complete with a face concealing mask.

He got dressed as quickly as he could, putting on the mask as well. It wasn't the best of disguises and would fail the moment anyone said anything to him, but if he was careful it might let him get farther than he would have without it.

Feeling more confident for having a plan and a gun he left the locker room and resumed searching for a way out.

The alarm continued to blare, a recorded message joining the sound. It was in Chinese so he had no idea what it was about, but he got the feeling that there was more going on than just his getting out.

Breaking into a slow jog he finished checking behind every door in the hall and found nothing more of use. It figured that finding a floor plan posted somewhere was too much to ask and all the computers he'd found had required a password.

Back to the stairwell then.

He started to go down again, stopping when he heard a commotion from below. By the sounds of it there was an argument going on, one that he had no desire to get involved it since it sounded like most of the individuals involved were J'avo.

So that meant going back up was his only choice.

Stopping at the door to the cell blocks, he hesitating just long enough for the door two flights down to slam open and a mixed group of J'avo and uniformed guards to pour into the stairwell. The argument, whatever it was about, was still going on and none of them even looked up at him.

The group stormed up the stairs and went straight past him into the cell block, one of the J'avo stopping just long enough to shove him out of the way and scream something that sounded like garbled profanity at him. The last of the group, one of the human guards looked at him, looked through the open door before speaking to him.

Jake had no idea what the man was saying, but he sounded terrified.

When the man repeated the last bit of what he'd said, looking at Jake with a hopeful expression Jake shrugged, hoping that whatever question he'd just been asked wasn't one that needed any more of an answer.

The man let out a nervous laugh and ran up another flight of stairs and out the door.

If Jake had to take a guess about what had just happened it was that he'd been right about not being the only one to have gotten out and that something, possibly several somethings, were loose in the building and the man had decided to get the fuck out. Considering Umbrella's track record it was a fairly safe guess and if that were the case following the fleeing guard might be the best thing to do.

Letting the door to the cell block close Jake weighed his options.

In the cell block the argument was still going on, loud enough for him to hear through the door. One of the J'avo, possibly the one that had pushed him judging by how incoherent it sounded, was screaming now. Maybe they'd arrived at his cell and seen that it was empty.

The message accompanying the alarm changed and red warning lights started flashing.

Whatever was going on was getting worse.

Another J'avo started yelling and, much to Jake's surprise, shots were fired. Apparently Umbrella still hadn't figured out how to control its monsters.

It was good for him though, the added confusion meant that it would take longer for anyone to start looking for him.

Making up his mind Jake went up and out the door the guard had gone through to see if it really was the way out.

The hall into which the man had fled looked promising, more so than the previous area he'd searched. Despite being the same unrelenting white as everywhere else, it looked more like something out of an office building than a lab or a prison.

Turning a corner he found the guard, or what was left of him.

It looked like he'd been attacked by a wild animal, or, more likely, a B.O.W. His had been throat torn out and his stomach ripped open. There was blood everywhere, splattered on the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. The thing must have gotten the drop on him because he hadn't even had a chance to draw his weapon.

Whatever it was couldn't have gone far and the last thing Jake wanted to do was run into it. Even if it didn't catch him unawares like it had the guard, he doubted that the gun he had would be enough to do much more than piss it off. Unfortunately, if the guard really had been trying to escape that meant that meant that the way out was past him, in the direction the B.O.W. was likely waiting.

Slowly, carefully, Jake inched past the body and down the hall. The guard had been torn up pretty badly, but Jake had heard enough stories about B.O.W.s carrying the viruses used to make them that he wouldn't have been too surprised if the guard got back up and came at him. Shooting the body in the head would be a good way to prevent that from happening, but it would also alert whatever had killed the man.

Up ahead there was an open door on the right side of the hall, smears of blood leading into the room. The room itself was unlit and large enough that he couldn't see much of anything past the half open door.

That had to be where the thing was. If he could make it past the door unnoticed he'd be safe.

Something moved in the room and he froze.

More movement, a crash and then a low moan of terror.

It had been months, but the sound of the voice was unmistakable.

"Sherry?"

Like he'd thought, she'd gotten out as well and now she was trapped in the room with whatever had killed the guard.

More noise in the darkened room, something large, maybe a table or desk being knocked over and shoved aside.

"Jake? Oh no. Please no. No no no no," she whimpered in the darkness.

"Don't worry," he reached into the room, feeling along the wall to try and find a light switch, "I'll get you out of here."

He didn't know how, but he wasn't about to leave her to get mauled.

The sound of the B.O.W.s' ragged, animal panting filled the room.

Sherry sobbed, "It wasn't supposed to be like this."

"You'll be fine," he reassured, still fumbling for the light switch. He'd seen her recover from what should have been a fatal injury, there was no reason for him to be worried, but how frantic, how hurt she sounded tore at him, "I'm not going to let anything hurt you."

Finding the light switch he flipped it on and jumped back from the door, expecting the thing to lunge at him the moment there was light in the room.

Sherry screamed.

He waited.

Nothing happened.

There was nothing in the room other than a number of scattered chairs and an overturned table in the far corner, behind which he could hear Sherry's muffled sobs.

"Where is it?" As soon as the words left his mouth he wanted to kick himself.

Behind the table Sherry let out an anguished wail.

"Shit," he pulled the mask off and threw it to the floor, "I'm sorry. I wasn't…"

Of course there was no 'it'. Even though he'd been thinking about it earlier he'd managed to forget that Sherry wasn't human. She was probably some sort of miniature Tyrant, something which he realized sounded far more adorable than it had any right to, probably because it was Sherry that he was thinking of. Tyrants could take a lot of punishment, but there was only so far they could go before they mutated. Umbrella had probably done things to her, messed her up pretty bad and B.O.W. or not, Sherry was still very much a little girl.

A little girl who, at the moment, was hyperventilating.

"Calm down," Jake made his way into the room, carefully stepping around the toppled chairs, "We'll get out of here and –"

She started crying.

On some level he knew what he was doing was crazy, walking into a room and trying to talk to a B.O.W., but the way she was carrying on he couldn't help but imagine that it was just the little blond girl that he'd been through so much insanity with that was hiding on the other side of the table. He just couldn't reconcile the sound of her crying with a Tyrant, miniature or not.

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," she gasped out between sobs, her voice shrill with fear, "I was supposed to – Oh Jake, I didn't want…"

"Just calm down. Whatever they did to you, it's done now. We can get out of here and that'll be that," leaving her would probably be for the best, except if he did he wouldn't be able to live with himself. It would be like abandoning a stupid little kid in the middle of a warzone. A stupid kid, who, Tyrant or not, was kind of cute, "Once we're out of here you can contact your employers, let them know where we are and I'll let you take me to them. They can get all the samples they need and I won't make them pay."

His outrageously generous offer only made her cry even harder.

Still hidden behind the table Sherry continued her crying fit, "It's not…I can't. They're going to…"

"Unless you know more than I do, we don't know what's happened since we got captured," he reminded her, "It might not be too late."

"It is!" she screamed, "I just…just…Jake, I can't…"

"How do you know?" he snapped back, starting to get frustrated with the whole situation. They needed to get out but she seemed hell bent on being miserable. Unless she really did know something that he didn't, "Umbrella wouldn't have kept us here this long if there wasn't something they still needed. They can't have succeeded in whatever it is that they're trying to do, not yet at least."

"Maybe," the table moved slightly. By the sounds of it she'd punched it, "I don't know."

"So do you want to stick around and try to stop them?" he didn't think so, but considering how much America loved the idea of some big hero saving the day on their own it was always a possibility.

"No, we can't! I can't," Sherry gasped, "She brought that thing, Ustanak, here. I can't fight it. She'd let it…it would stand outside where they kept me and…Jake that thing would…I don't want to ever see it again."

"What the fuck do you want then?" he shouted, exasperated with how long she'd been carrying on for when there were more important things to worry about, like escaping.

"I-I just wanted to be allowed out," she stammered, "I begged Derek for years and th-this was it. They let me go on the mission to find you and if I did a good job of it I'd…they'd let me…I thought, maybe…I just wanted to go outside without guards and fences everywhere. Ever since I was little I dreamed that…"

He'd assumed that she'd volunteered for the project or something, but the way she was talking made it sound like she'd been an experiment since she was a little kid. No wonder she acted so clueless if she'd been kept locked away for most of her life, except it didn't explain what had her so upset. All that time should have meant that she was used to the idea of what she was.

"You found me," he gave an exasperated sigh, "So if we get out of here it's mission complete. You did it! Good job! Everyone's happy!"

"No!"

Her scream was somewhere between an animal howl of pain and a child's heartbroken sob.

"What's wrong?" it was a stupid, useless question to be asking, but if he got an answer maybe he'd be able to make some progress.

"I-I," her voice grew soft, little more than a whisper, "I don't want to be a monster. Jake, I don't-I don't…I…"

So far he'd stopped a few feet from the table and was unable to see her. All he knew was that whatever had happened, it couldn't have been that bad. She was probably just a little messed up, claws for sure looking at what she'd done to the guard, maybe some exposed muscle and other stuff that she'd probably be able to hide if she dressed right, but it couldn't have been that bad. The fact that she was still coherent enough to be upset about it was proof of that. Maybe if he'd been in her situation he'd be pissed off, but he was sure that he wouldn't be a wreck like she was. Probably the reason she was so upset was because she was a woman and cared about her appearance like that. Yeah, that had to be it. If it were him he'd get used to the claws, wrap bandages over whatever bone and muscle was sticking out and deal with it.

"It can't be that bad," but he kept his distance, waiting for her to get up from her hiding spot.

"It's bad," she whimpered.

"We can worry about it once we get out of here," he snapped. If she didn't get up from behind the table by the time he counted to ten he was going to go over there, pull her to her feet and drag her out.

Sherry shifted slightly, sniffled loudly and made no attempt to do anything else.

"Are you really going to make me pick you up and carry you out of here?" Jake demanded, just about ready to start counting.

"I don't think…" her statement trailed off in a hysterical giggle.

"That's the problem," he grumbled as he looked over the table, "You don't…"

The thing on the other side stared up at him, blue gray eyes wide with terror. They were the one thing that remained recognizable and even they hadn't remained unchanged. The shape of her pupils was all wrong, wavery, and streaks of color had spread out into the whites. What struck him the most was that they were the saddest looking eyes he'd ever seen in an otherwise expressionless face, leathery bruise colored skin stretched taunt over a mask-like plate of bone. Thin lips pulled back from jagged yellow fangs in a fearful grimace.

"It's…" Sherry started.

"Not that bad," he lied, holding out a hand to help her up. It was bad, it was awful, but he'd seen worse.

She reached out with claws long and sharp as knives then stopped. They were smeared red with the dead guard's blood.

Shaking, she pulled her arm back and covered her face.

The motion was difficult for her. It was hard for him to tell, but it looked like her shoulders had been twisted out of place and reset in a new position. The question was, had it been due to injury that hadn't healed properly or was it just part of the mutation she'd undergone?

What exactly had they done to her?

Whatever it was it must have been pretty bad to leave her in the state she was in. She'd been so cheerful, so stupidly optimistic and trusting. Now she was a shaking wreck, unable to even make eye contact, something that was made all the more pathetic by the physical changes she'd undergone.

Never in his life had he felt as bad for someone as he did for her at this moment.

"Come on super girl," carefully he knelt down and put a hand on her shoulder, "We've got to get out of here."

Her skin twitched at the touch, muscles spasming beneath his fingers. When he lifted his hand an enormous red eye opened, its irregularly shaped slit pupil widening until it was nearly round. It rolled wildly in its socket, blinked several times and closed. The fact that he didn't shout, jump back or respond in any way was a testament to the shit he'd seen.

When Sherry remained motionless he took her by the arm and made an effort to pull her to her feet.

She made no attempt at resisting, which he figured counted as a good start.

Once he had her on her feet he was able to get a better look at her. The first thing he realized was that the fact that she had tried to hide from him was the only thing that had prevented a disaster. If he'd seen her standing in the hall he wouldn't have recognized her and would have opened fire the instant he saw her. There was nothing of the crazy little girl he'd first met left. Hell, she hardly even looked human.

The thing standing in front of him was taller than he was and considerably wider across the shoulders, though that was likely due to the way her arms had gained an extra joint there, possibly to accommodate the second, smaller set of arms that was still partially fused to her chest. The thing was, as twisted as her anatomy was, she looked a lot better off than any of the C-virus mutants they'd encountered in that she was still roughly symmetrical. The changes, horrific as they were, seemed less random, as though there was a process to what had happened to her, a progression towards a final point. Add that to the fact that he couldn't see any exposed organs or open wounds meant that overall things weren't really that bad, or at least they could have been a lot worse. She wasn't at all what he would have expected from a human based B.O.W., more natural looking if a B.O.W. could be described that way.

Or maybe he was trying to justify the fact that he wasn't utterly revolted by her because he was pretty sure he should have been.

The whole time he looked her over she kept her head turned away from him, but at the same time she stared straight at him with the set of red, slit-pupiled eyes in her shoulders. He could tell that she could see with them because they followed his every move, widening and then rapidly closing when he looked at them.

What was it with viruses and extra eyes? At least they weren't blank white bug eyes like J'avo had.

Because somehow this was better.

An explosion somewhere in one of the lower floors shook the facility.

Sherry tensed, the eyes in her shoulders opening up to look around fearfully.

"Let's go," he ordered, resisting the urge to raise his voice. It wasn't because he was afraid that Sherry would attack him, she'd already made it clear that wasn't about to happen. Instead his concern was that she might start crying. He wouldn't normally care about something like that, but this was Sherry and if he was going to be honest with himself, he'd somehow ended up growing to like the crazy American.

If he was going to be _absolutely_ honest with himself, he still liked her.

When she remained standing, frozen in place watching him, he grabbed her by the wrist.

Strong as she was, there was no way he could have dragged her if she'd resisted, but she didn't even try, meekly following her, breathing short and sharp, like she was trying not to cry.

When they went into the hall she whimpered and grabbed his shoulder with her smaller set of arms, the ones ending in actual hands rather than massive clawed paws. Those slender, bony fingers were surprisingly strong.

Turning back to look at her he saw that all of her eyes were tightly shut.

As much as he wanted to ask her what had her in such a bad way, he held his tongue, afraid that saying anything would bring on another crying fit. There would be time to make sense of things later, but for now getting out had to be their number one priority.

There was another explosion, this one louder, and the lights went out.

Between being plunged into total darkness and trying to guide Sherry he miss-stepped and nearly fell. Sherry's death grip on his shoulder was enough to keep him standing. Reflexively, she pulled him in close, awkwardly wrapping one of her larger, main arms around him. He could feel her shaking.

"Can you see?" he asked hopefully. All those eyes had to be good for something.

"No," she whimpered, gripping him even tighter, "It's too dark."

He'd noticed that, in the cabin, until he got the fire going she'd been anxious, looking all around and jumping at every little noise outside, like she thought they were about to be attacked. At the time he'd figured that it was because of exactly that, that she was still jumped up on adrenaline, nw he couldn't help but wondering, "Are you afraid of the dark or something?"

"Yes," she said quietly, "Ever since…"

Amazing, the Americans had managed to make a humanoid B.O.W. that was afraid of the dark. There was a joke in there somewhere. Except maybe he was wrong to think of it that way. Maybe he should be thinking of her as the little girl she'd resembled when he first met her. A naïve little girl who'd thought that everything would turn out okay despite being caught up in the middle of the biggest bioterror incident since Terragrigia. And she was afraid of the dark and had been for a long time.

That was all it took for his frustration to fade to pity.

The alarms, which had been sounding the whole time, fell silent.

"This isn't good," Jake muttered, debating whether or not he should make Sherry take the lead for the simple reason that if they were to run into anything unpleasant she'd be the most able to deal with it. Practicality fought with how bad he felt for her and was, to his surprise, lost.

"On the way up here I found a lab where they were keeping some chrysalids," she said in a hurried whisper, "I let them out because I thought they'd help cover our escape."

Great, just great. They were trapped in the dark with who knew how many B.O.W.s, ones that weren't afraid of the dark.

"I messed up."

Panic was starting to creep back into her voice, exactly what he didn't need.

"No you didn't," he reassured, "Anything that keeps the guards here busy and out of our way is a good thing. As soon as you're ready we can start moving. I'll lead the way."

There was a long pause, then, "Okay."

Keeping a hand on the wall he started making his way forward, Sherry clinging to him for dear life. It was awkward going and, thanks to the fact that Sherry had started crying again, there was no way he'd be able to hear if there was anything heading their way unless it was making an awful lot of noise.

Eventually they reached the end of the hall and had the choice of going either left or right.

"Which way?" he asked figuring, that since Sherry had taken a different route through the building, she might have a better idea of where to go.

He could feel her shifting her weight as she thought, fidgeting nervously.

A hum filled the air, coming from one of the floors beneath then. Considering the sorts of mutations he'd seen with the J'avo his first thought was of some sort of giant insect, but the noise was constant, mechanical. A moment later red emergency lights flickered on.

Sherry tensed, nearly jerking him off his feet.

"Take it easy," he patted her arm.

"Right," she said, loosening her grip on him slightly, "I mean we should go to the right. There's nothing down the hall to the left."

Her tone left him doubtful if there really was nothing in that direction. Nothing useful maybe, nothing she wanted to talk about, but there was something down there.

So they went right until they came to a door.

Sherry let go of him and took a step back, getting into position to cover him when he opened it, not that she had any way of following through on the intent if she needed to. Despite what she'd done to the guard he had his doubts that she'd lunge past him to deal with any threats if it came to that.

Still, it was the thought that counted.

Readying his gun he reached out and turned the knob. When he went to pull it open he discovered that the door was much heavier than it looked. That could have meant a lot of things given their location, but he chose not to dwell on why a door in an Umbrella facility might be reinforced.

Looking back at Sherry he gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile, then started to open the door.

A thin sliver of bright, normal light shone into the hall. It was too much to hope for that they'd already found the way out, which meant that the part of the building they were about to enter still had full power. Either it was more important or on a different grid, possibly both.

On the other side he could hear voices talking in Chinese. They sounded angry, but the language itself always sounded angry to him. Normal conversations between the guards and scientists that he'd overheard had sounded like they could have degenerated into a fistfight at a moment's notice, and those had just been mundane greetings and polite conversation. The yelling of the J'avo had sounded like total insanity.

Opening the door far enough to look he peered into the hall beyond.

In what had to be one of the most surreal things he'd ever seen he found himself staring out into a hall that wouldn't have been out of place in a luxury hotel. The walls were dark wood and the floor was covered in thick carpet and expensive looking rugs. There were paintings on the walls, all in ornate frames and in the middle of the hall a group of men in suits and masks were talking loudly in Chinese. Whatever they were supposed to be, they didn't look like guards, even though they were all armed. The masks meant that they were probably J'avo and since they weren't waving their guns around or shoving each other they clearly weren't terribly excited about anything.

It was easy to assume that they worked for Umbrella, but at the same time months had passed since they'd been captured, so there was no reason to figure that every mutant worked for the same boss. There'd been the company he'd been working with after all, used as a quick distraction for some larger, unknown purpose, one that seemed to have centered on finding and capturing him.

Stepping to the side he motioned for Sherry to go over and look, "There's five of them. They're all armed, but they don't look like they work here. I'm not sure if the place is under attack and our escape just happened to line up with it or if these guys have been brought in to help find us."

Sherry went to look, in the process letting him get a look at her back and yet another eye, this one just off center beneath her right shoulder. Or above the shoulder of the smaller set of arms. Opposite the eye there was a long row of stitches, indicating there should have been another. The sight of the neat row of stitches running down her back pissed him off.

What had Umbrella done, injuring her in a way that she wasn't able to regenerate from it? As much as the idea infuriated him, he understood the logic behind it, keeping something potentially dangerous they'd want to have a way to kill it if they needed to. It also meant that he'd have to be careful to make sure that nothing happened to her because… Just because she was a B.O.W. didn't mean that he shouldn't be worried about her.

Closing the door slightly, Sherry continued to look out at the men in the hall, all the while keeping the eye on her back fixed on him, "Do you think they're J'avo or you know, people?"

Suddenly it all fell into place, her freakout earlier, the way she hadn't been able to look when they went into the hall, it all made sense. The guard had been the first actual person she'd killed, before that it had been all mutants and B.O.W.s. Jake had forgotten exactly how bad that moment was, the first time you ended the life of another human being. He still remembered his first time, how he and his friends had gone out and gotten drunk later that night. He'd drank until he was sick and then kept drinking because that at least had given him an excuse to be sick. It was the amount of blood that had gotten to him, and that had been after shooting someone a good distance away. Sherry had been right up in there, using her claws to tear the guard apart. That had to be the reason, or at least part of it.

"My money's on J'avo, the masks are what give them away. The masks and the yelling," he said quickly, hoping he was right, "If we take them out fast everything's going to be good. We take what we can from their gear, get you a gun and get the fuck out of here because this has to be the way out."

He was pretty sure that she'd be able to use a gun with her smaller set of arms, her aim would be shit, but just having it would help.

"Should I help?" Sherry asked, shaking slightly, either from fear or the desire to do something.

Despite his concern for her, it was difficult not to give a bitingly sarcastic answer to a question like that. There were five of them, one of him, they were all armed and he doubted that he'd be able to do enough damage to kill even one of them if they were J'avo. Of course he expected her to help, but at the same time he was worried about her. There was no reason for it given the situation, but that didn't change how he felt.

He was about to get into one of the most one sided fights he'd ever been in, or it would have been if not for the fact that he had a B.O.W. on his side and he was willing to tell that _weapon_ to sit this one out because he was concerned about _her_.

The only explanation for it all was that he'd gone crazy.

"You really think they're J'avo?" Sherry continued.

That was the problem, he was still thinking of her as Sherry. He'd known that she wasn't human, even when she'd looked it, for enough time that he'd gotten used to the idea. Now that she looked like what she was he was still able to think of her as a girl rather than a monster. A girl that he'd somehow fallen for.

"Yes, they're J'avo," he sighed, knowing that there were two ways the situation could end. The J'avo would finish their conversation and walk away, or, more likely considering how things tended to turn out for him, they'd start heading towards the two of them.

"Okay. I think I can…" Sherry stopped to take a deep breath and when she next spoke it was with more confidence than she'd had since their capture, "I can handle J'avo."

Having said as much Sherry rushed through the door and charged the group.

She smacked the first across the face, shattering his mask and sending him flying as she slammed into the next closest and smashed him against the wall.

Using the door for cover Jake took aim and shot a third in the chest. His only thought was that he hoped that they were J'avo, because if they were human he was going to feel like such an asshole for convincing her to attack them.

The one he'd shot remained standing, which didn't mean anything. He could have been wearing a bulletproof vest under his suit, but then the one Sherry had clawed stood up. With the mask gone he could see its three bulging white eyes.

The fact that he was relieved that they were J'avo was proof of how fucked up the whole situation was.

Glad that he hadn't set Sherry up for another panic attack Jake kept shooting, trying for headshots, not that it seemed to have done much good in the past.

Sherry had managed to hook her claws into the one that she'd knocked into the wall and slammed him head first into the wall, the wood splintering from the repeated impacts, before throwing him at one that started shooting at her.

The pair fell to the floor in a tangled heap, giving her the space she needed to grab the J'avo that Jake had been shooting at by the arm and twist. There was a sickening crack as bone broke, her claws slicing through the J'avo's flesh with a spray of slime as the limb tore off. Overbalanced, she staggered back, barely managing to catch herself. At that point Jake had to stop and reload, so she was on her own.

Growling, she charged forward and grabbed the J'avo that had had managed to disentangle itself from its dying comrade and tackled it to the floor. Pinning down with her main arms she used her smaller set of limbs to punch it in the face again and again. Frail as they looked, those limbs were still inhumanly strong. Jake could hear the bones of the thing's face shattering as steam and slime poured from its injuries.

When she finally let go it remained on the floor twitching like a bug in its death throes, its head little more than a mess of ooze and bone fragments.

The J'avo whose arm she'd ripped off let out a shrill screech as the mangled stump stretched into a massive scythe-like limb. Before it managed to use its new weapon, which looked like it was capable of doing some serious damage, Jake shot it between its leftmost pair of eyes. It staggered a few steps towards him, then fell to the floor, its regenerative abilities having been pushed to their limits by so much damage inflicted so quickly.

Another headshot caused one of the two remaining J'avo to drop to its knees, slime seeping from its injuries, while Sherry finished the last by more or less tearing it in half before smashing the kneeling J'avo with all four arms before its body could finish hardening into a chrysalis.

Jake stepped out into the hall and surveyed the carnage, "Good job. Really impressive."

He meant it too. Having seen what she'd done to the guard had been one thing, but actually watching what she was capable of was another. Whatever virus the American government used on her was like nothing he'd ever imagined was possible. Despite being mutated to the point where she wasn't even recognizable as human she was still sane, still herself. That any country was able to make weapons like that was terrifying. It made him glad for America's hypocritical stance on B.O.W.s, because if they'd been openly making and using things like Sherry it would have been the end of his line of work. No one would want to work as a contractor if there was a risk of running into an opposing force made of B.O.W.s that could think, follow orders, and work together. Just the thought of them would be enough to make people stop what they were doing, or resort to other methods.

He stared down at the smoldering remains of the J'avo, wondering for a moment if he was seeing the future of war. Monsters fighting monsters while guys like him, normal human soldiers, became obsolete.

Then Sherry looked at him and smiled weakly before grabbing a wall hanging and attempting to wipe the gore from her claws. The absurd sight made him a lot less worried about the possibility of his own obsolescence. Sherry was a lot of things, but she wasn't a career soldier like him. There had to be a reason that she'd been put through whatever process had made her and not someone else, someone more capable. He knew that there was a reason really strong B.O.W.s were hard to get, most of the time they died before the process of making them was over. Maybe Sherry was the only survivor of the process, maybe it had been random luck, maybe she was some sort of trial run, maybe he was thinking up random ideas to try and fill in the blanks because he knew so little about her.

What he did know was that there was no denying that she was a B.O.W., but equally undeniable was how utterly feminine she was. It was stupid, but she had been and honestly, still was, the most obviously girly woman he'd ever met. Maybe what was part of what he had found so endearing about her, that despite how she acted she was still competent. The way she'd managed to kill four J'avo without getting hurt herself was proof of that.

"So, where to now?" he looked up and down the hall, marveling at the obscene level of wealth on display before examining the bodies on the floor.

Giving up on cleaning her hands Sherry threw the wall hanging to the floor, "I don't know. Out of here and then…I don't know."

Looting the J'avo for gear of any sort wasn't going to be worth it. There was greenish gray slime covering everything, steaming as it cooled and hardened. Sherry was going to have to wait to get a gun, not that she needed it. Eventually though she'd need one, just so that dealing with things from a safe distance was an option.

"Any plans for what to do once we escape?" he asked, testing the waters, trying to figure out if it would be safe for him to make a suggestion of his own, that she stick with him rather than going back to America. He felt like an idiot for even thinking of the idea in the first place, but if Sherry's whole reason for going on a mission to find him was to get out of whatever lab she'd been kept in, then she might be open to the idea.

"No," she tensed, looking at him carefully.

That was more or less the answer he'd expected. For all her big ideas, planning hadn't seemed to have been her strong suit, something that sort of made sense and wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Hell, he wasn't the best at coming up with plans, otherwise he'd have had a lot more money than he did by this point, not that he didn't have enough, it was just that conflicts in eastern Europe had never been that profitable and that was where he'd done most of his work.

"You going to contact your employers and let them know you're still alive and that you've got me?" he was sure that the answer was going to be 'yes', but he had to ask, just to be sure.

She shook her head violently, "No, not like this. They-they'll take me and lock me away and they'll do things just like-like…"

It figured that America would be the first to figure out a way to make B.O.W.s that could actually pass for human and that they'd have no use for them once they mutated too badly. That put Sherry in a bad situation, one that he felt guilty over being happy about, "You want to stick with me for a bit then, at least until you figure out what to do?"

"Why?" somehow she managed to make the single word question half hopeful half accusing. It was a sentiment he understood well enough, being made an offer that didn't seem to make sense, but clearly had a catch.

"We don't know where we are, China probably, but other than that who knows? After the mess in Edonia I've got nothing. Well, not quite nothing," he amended, "I've got a bit of money stashed away in accounts here and there. It's just that who knows if I'll be able to get it any time soon. The least we should do is work together until we have options. Besides, it'll be better off with two of us. Once we're in a better situation we can figure out how to get your employers the vaccine they're after, negotiate things on our terms. Hell, if you want, if they want it that badly, maybe make it so that you staying with me, keeping an eye on me or something, is part of the deal."

The last bit was something he made up for her benefit, since he really didn't expect whatever organization that she was working for to want to give her up so easily, but it felt like the kind of thing she'd want to hear. In the long run he figured that he could try to convince her to just work with him. He didn't expect her to want to work with the sorts of people he was used to working with, but there were plenty of legitimate organizations he could think of that might be willing to hire someone like her. Starting out would be the hardest part, but after that…

Her eyes narrowed. He could tell that she was trying to figure out what his angle in the situation was, how it would benefit him, but she was too new at figuring out what motivated people. If he was lucky she'd assume that he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart, which he more or less was. Yeah, intelligent B.O.W.s were worth a lot of money, but trying to find a buyer felt a bit too much like crossing a line that he wasn't willing to cross. He did have some principals after all.

"Do you really think that would work?" now she sounded more hopeful than suspicious, "That they won't make me come back?"

"How are they going to force you to if you don't want to? The way things are right now no one will even be able to find you if you don't want them to," he offered, hoping that she'd latch onto the idea.

Somewhere in the compound, on one of the floors beneath them, there was a muffled explosion. It was enough to distract Sherry from her confusion and self-pity, at least for the time being.

"Okay," she said hesitantly, still looking uncertain about the situation, "I don't know why you want to help me all of a sudden, but it's not like I have a choice."

The resignation in her tone was at odds with the cheerful girl she'd been when he first met her. He wanted to blame Umbrella, but he had a feeling that it went back way before that. Whatever she'd been through, she was used to ending up in situations where she didn't have a choice in matters.

Another explosion sounded, this one closer and strong enough to shake the pictures on the walls.

"Let's get out of here," he urged, glad for the excuse to end the awkward silence that had started to grow.

They wandered the halls, finding rooms full of antique weaponry, paintings, a grand piano, and countless other displays of wealth. It was positively disgusting and he wished that they had the time to poke around a bit. In any other situation he wouldn't have been above taking a few souvenirs, but nothing he could see was small or easy enough to sell to make it worth it. If he was going to take anything it would be something he could carry and turn to cash quickly.

Turning a corner they came to an overturned cabinet. The glass doors had shattered and the carpet was full of broken glass, both from them and from the bottles that had been inside.

"Careful," Sherry stepped cautiously past the patch of wet carpet, "I don't know what any of that stuff is, but I'm assuming it's dangerous by the smell of it."

The sharp, earthy smell made him wrinkle his nose, "It's scotch."

Sherry turned to look at him like he was crazy, "You're kidding, right? It smells like furniture cleaner."

"Very expensive furniture cleaner," he laughed, bending down to examine an unbroken bottle, "This is real high end stuff."

"You couldn't pay me to drink something that smells like that," Sherry snorted.

Smiling, he picked up the bottle, figuring that there was no harm in keeping it. After the past six months a drink would be nice, once they were safe that was.

That was a good idea actually, celebrating once they were free and safe.

"How about this then, when we get out of here and find a place to lay low we can have a drink to celebrate. Tell me what you like and I'll get it for you."

"I've never actually drank before," she admitted, sounding sad of all things, "I never really did much of anything."

"Well, we can change that," he said, offering the bottle to her and trying not to laugh when she backed away, looking at him like he was trying to poison her.

They were fortunate enough not to encounter any further difficulty as they made their way through the building.

It was dark outside when they emerged onto the streets of a city in chaos. There were no people, or at least no living people. Bodies littered the streets and several zombies shuffled around, not yet having noticed them.

Of all the places to end up, the middle of a city was either the best or worst possible outcome. The buildings around them still had power, but the streets were blocked off with hastily made barricades. Something bad had gone down very recently.

For a time they simply stood in place, listening to the screams and gunfire all around them. The wind carried on it the acrid smell of smoke causing his eyes to water.

"Let's just find a place to rest for now," he coughed, "Figure out what's going on and come up with a plan from there."

Sherry nodded, the eyes on her shoulders wide as she stared up at the buildings and all around her as though she didn't know where to look first, "It's like the end of the world out here."

Somewhere in the distance sirens wailed and Jake smiled, "That's good for us, in all the confusion it'll be easier to hide."

Easier for both of them maybe. J'avo in Edonia, zombies in whatever city they were in, and who knew what else. They'd needed him for a vaccine, but maybe it was too late for that. He could make it work though, he'd made it through some bad situations and this wasn't the worst. If it was bad he'd find a way to make things work for him, no, for the two of them. If they played things right Sherry might not have any reason to be worried about what she was.

Together they slowly made their way down a street full of abandoned cars and into a night full of violence and chaos.

Just the place for a fresh start.


	21. One Big Happy

**Summary:** A simple mistake costs Ethan dearly. Now a helpless captive of Eveline all he can do is wait and survive as a member of Eveline's family. Of course, the very nature of what Evie is makes survival a challenge.

 **Characters:** Ethan Winters, Mia Winters, Lucas Baker, Eveline

 **Notes:** I decided to jump on the RE7 bandwagon and write something. Mostly I was playing around with how much of a blank slate of a character Ethan is. Like so many games in first person I get that the idea is that you're supposed to be able to read into him what you want, but that makes it hard to write a fic about him.

o0o

Ethan shifted listlessly in the makeshift cage Lucas had fashioned for him in the basement of the main house. Over the sounds of dripping water, the house settling and other noises that he still hadn't been able to place and had long since decided that he didn't want to, he could hear footsteps. They were cautious, quiet, hardly there at all, which meant one of two things. Either it was just another auditory hallucination or Mia was coming to visit him of her own volition. No matter what the reason behind the sound, it was better than the alternative of Lucas coming to torment him.

The man was insane and Ethan doubted that Eveline had anything to do with it. Everything he did was too well thought out, too deliberately cruel.

The horrifying puzzle game he'd set up had been so different from Jack and Marguerite's violent mania, suggesting a more perverse, planned madness. Ethan had walked right into the trap, thinking he'd outsmarted Lucas, using what he'd learned from the videos that Lucas had left lying around. At the time he'd thought it had been stupidity on Lucas' part, that he'd kept the tapes as trophies so that he could watch them over and over again, finding amusement in his own sadistic cleverness.

Instead Ethan only outsmarted himself.

Lucas had changed the password.

It was the simplest thing to do and he'd never even considered it, something that Lucas mocked him for over the speakers in the birthday room, going on to tell him that he'd ruined the game by cheating, ruined the big surprise at the end so that it wouldn't be any fun when he did solve the puzzle.

As though he was going even try when he knew what would happen to him if he did.

Lucas kept ranting, alternating between mocking him for being so stupid and berating him for cheating, eventually breaking down into repeating the same threats and insults again and again.

Ethan tuned it out, focusing on trying to find where the explosives were hidden without accidentally setting them off, thinking that maybe, if he did, he could use them to blow open the door, get out and find another way around to rescue Mia and Zoe. He'd been so intent on finding the bomb that he never heard the door open, the sounds of footsteps behind him. The sound of Lucas ranting over the speakers was enough to hide those small noises.

It wasn't until the very last instant, when it was far too late to do anything, that he got any hint of how badly he'd been tricked. The whole situation must have been too much for Lucas and he started to laugh.

That sound, so close behind him, made Ethan whirl around just in time to see Lucas standing behind him with a baseball bat.

The ranting he'd heard over the speakers had been a recording.

Lucas swung, not bothering to hold back, the bat catching Ethan across the face, stunning him.

He fell to his hands and knees, unable to breathe from the pain. The next swing hit him in the back of the head, knocking him out.

There was some sort of method to Lucas' madness, something that Eveline couldn't have inspired. It had been there all along and Eveline had nothing to do with it.

She hadn't been the one to suggest that Lucas make the cage, hadn't been controlling him when Ethan woke up tied down on the table in the basement, the taste of his own blood thick and heavy in his mouth. Lucas had been acting under his own free will when he took the piece of rebar and held it up over Ethan's arm. He knew because Lucas had taken the time to explain exactly what he was doing, how he'd outsmarted them all and won. Ethan had to listen to what he'd done to Zoe, how he'd 'messed her up good for what she'd done', hurting her in ways 'that'd take her a long while to fix up' before 'putting her away in her room to cool her heels for a time'. The only reason he hadn't done the same with Mia, he'd said with no small degree of regret, was because Eveline had said that Mia was off limits.

Ethan supposed he should have felt relief over that, but then Lucas explained his plan for making sure that Mia didn't try anything, that as long as he wasn't going anywhere Mia would stay and behave.

Smiling, Lucas took the length of rebar he'd been holding and thrust it sharply downward, driving it through Ethan's injured left arm, slid a length of chain onto it and twisted it into a rough loop before repeating the process with his right.

Ethan was able to turn his head just enough to prevent himself from choking on his own vomit when Lucas tested the improvised manacles thoroughly, making sure that there was no way for him to escape without having to break bones in his arms.

Then, and only then, did he repeatedly strike Ethan in the head and face to stun him, yelling at him the entire time for 'nearly ruining all his fun', before pushing the table into the cage.

The table didn't have wheels and the noise was horrendous, cutting through the haze of nausea and pain enough that Ethan screamed, choked as he vomited bile, and then screamed and kept screaming.

The pain and noise continued until his throat was raw and he passed out.

When he finally regained consciousness the last few feet of each length of chain were woven together around the bars at the back of the cage, held in place by half a dozen heavy padlocks. Lucas wasn't taking any chances.

Since then Lucas had been his most frequent visitor. Sometimes he would bring food, usually live rats. It was a game for him, the only game he could play with Ethan in a cage, throw the rats into the cage and see if they got away or if he was hungry enough, desperate enough to eat. At first disgust had won the majority of the time and he went hungry, but with greater and greater frequency it was desperation. He had to survive, he'd decided, he'd come too far to just give up and Mia was still free. There was still a chance of escape as long as they were alive, that was what he told himself when Lucas watched him as he ate, finding entertainment in his humiliation.

Other times there was no food of any sort, just torment. Lucas had to restrain himself though and complained bitterly about it, because Eveline liked Ethan more and he didn't dare risk the ire of the monstrous child.

There were times when Ethan doubted that Eveline actually had any hold over him, that Lucas was only there, going along with what she wanted because it gave him the opportunity to have his fun.

It was painfully obvious that Lucas hated her and was willing to take his frustration out on any convenient target.

Lucas wasn't his only visitor though, there was the monster herself, Eveline.

Her first visit was indistinguishable from a dream. He'd noticed her watching him, completely silent and staring. When he blinked she was gone.

The next time she actually spoke, smiling, telling him that they'd be a real family soon, that she just had to be careful to do it right. Because sometimes it went wrong, she told him, like the others that she'd tried to make part of her family. She had to be very careful with him because she didn't want anything bad to happen to her daddy.

After that she was there near constantly, watching him from the shadows, moving around in the edges of his vision, whispering when he tried to sleep. She'd been the one who gave him the idea that he should wedge the rebar through the bars of the cage and twist, see if he could break the bones in his arms and then pull himself free from the chains. When he actually started to follow through she'd changed her mind, panicked and went screaming for Lucas to come and make him stop.

Lucas arrived, eventually, a little too slowly and a little too resentfully, not that Eveline noticed.

She was storming around the room, screaming, crying that it was going all wrong, that it couldn't go all wrong because she wanted her daddy.

Lucas had ignored her screaming, found a length of rope somewhere in the room and entered the cage. When Ethan tried to lunge at him, Lucas tripped him and kicked him in the head a few times.

Apparently Eveline only cared if he hurt himself, when Lucas did it it was fine. Grumbling to himself, Lucas had grabbed his arms, managing a small chuckle when he realized that Ethan had managed to break both the bones in his right, and then tied them behind his back. Lucas wasn't careful with any of it, tying the rope so tightly that later, when he was thinking clearly, Ethan worried that it would cut off his circulation.

Once he was done, Lucas stomped out of the cage, past Eveline.

"Evie," Lucas said without even stopping to look at her, "If you did this you can fix this."

She took Lucas' words to heart, spent the next who knew how many days at Ethan's side, fussing over him as best as she was able.

"I didn't mean to make you sick daddy," she sobbed, "I'll make it better though."

She babbled meaningless reassurances to him as she washed the floor of his cage with a filthy rag and a bucket of equally filthy water, spreading the mess around.

Everything was covered in it, vile black mold that grew on everything. The walls, the floor, his clothing. It even left stains streaked on his skin. He watched them spread and grow, filth on filth, unable to wipe it away with his hands tied behind his back.

"Bring him real food!" She'd demanded when she saw Lucas bringing him a bucket of live rats.

He obeyed, vanishing up the stairs and returning much later with a plate of rotten filth.

When Ethan refused to eat Lucas didn't need to be told what to do, he went into the cage, kicked Ethan off his feet and put a knee on his chest to pin him to the floor. Ethan clenched his teeth together, keeping his mouth tightly shut.

Grabbing a handful of the filth Lucas stared down, trying to solve the puzzle of how to get him to eat. Lucas liked solving puzzles and figured this one out quickly. Hooking his thumb and two fingers against the sides of his mouth he squeezed until Ethan was forced to open his mouth. Then he shoved the filth against his face, pinching his nose shut in the process. Ethan was left with the choice of swallow or choke.

He held out for as long as he could and then forced Lucas to repeat it for the next mouthful and every one after that.

Meals went like that until Lucas got sloppy, let one of his fingers slip into Ethan's mouth, get between his teeth. That time Ethan was willing to bite down, chew and swallow.

Lucas stared down at him.

Ethan stared back.

Lucas lifted his hand to stare at that. He was missing his thumb.

Scowling, Lucas shoved away and left the cage, "Evie, if you're so worried, you feed him."

And she did, without touching him or even getting into the cage, she forced him to eat.

Under her will he fell on the mess like an animal, eating it in frantic gulping mouthfuls and then rolling in it afterwards because with his hands tied behind his back he couldn't get up until she released him.

The one good thing about the filth and mess and rot was that it softened the rope to the point where he was finally able to break it.

If only he could do the same with the chains.

When Lucas brought his next meal to him he grabbed the plate and threw it at Eveline before she could force him to eat.

Instead of being angry, she was ecstatic, dancing around the room.

"Daddy's getting better!" She cheered, clapping her hands, "Soon mommy can come and visit and we can be a family."

She was as crazy as the rest of them, that was the only sense Ethan could make of it. The only difference was that she was the one behind it all.

The next time Eveline came to visit she was leading a terrified looking Mia along with her. Lucas trailed behind, jangling the keys to the cage, his expression sullen.

Mia looked back and forth between Lucas and Eveline in silent horror.

"Don't be sad mommy," Eveline cooed, "The three of us can be together now, a real family."

"The three of us…" Mia repeated, staring at him through the bars of the cage, "Ethan…"

He stood up, walked towards her, chains dragging against the floor.

Mia started to sob.

"No crying!" Eveline stomped her foot, the picture of a petulant child, "We're a family. You should be happy!"

Mia fell silent, her expression going dangerously blank. Eveline was the one in charge. Ethan could feel it, enough that when Lucas opened the cage door, instead of lunging at him, he shuffled to the back of the cage and sat down. Eveline sat down on his lap and Mia sat down next to them, putting her arm around his shoulder with a complete absence of affection.

"Tell me a story mommy!" Eveline begged, even though she was the one controlling everything.

Mia, after some inarticulate mumbling, launched into a garbled, meandering version of Snow White.

Eveline listened with rapt attention, gasping with horror and giggling with amusement at all the wrong parts.

The three of them were like actors in a play they'd never rehearsed, missing their cues and botching their lines.

Eveline looked like a little girl, ten years old if that, but there was something wrong about her that went beyond the virus. Nothing human lay behind her eyes, wide and blank as a dead dog's.

Next time Eveline brought Mia to visit she carried a book with her, a book of fairy tales. She made Mia read them, one after another until Mia couldn't talk.

After that Eveline was careful to limit herself to one or two stories, or a single chapter in longer books.

The three of them fell into an uncomfortable routine, finally getting the act down well enough to go through the motions.

Ethan would stay at the far end of the cage, sitting in the corner and staring past the two of them.

Mia would follow Eveline, sitting down at the opposite corner and glaring at Eveline.

Eveline would sit down between the two of them, exerting her will and forcing them to move nearer to each other.

The only reason Mia kept so far away during the visits was because it was a way of resisting. Small acts like that were mostly lost on Eveline, she seemed to expect some degree of difficulty, but it was only when they actively fought her that she got upset.

Like the time Mia finally snapped, screaming at her and calling her a miserable little bitch. Eveline had thrown a tantrum. She started screaming at Mia. It was a mindless, black rage, the kind only a child could experience. Ethan had felt it like it was his own, blotting everything out.

Eveline had laughed when he first attacked Mia, but when he kept at it, grabbing her by the shoulders, slamming her against the bars of the cage, dragging her down and then slamming her head against the floor over and over again, the laughter stopped.

She tried to make him stop, her attempts made his skin crawl, made it hard for him to breathe, but the rage didn't go. By that point he was biting, clawing, tearing, desperate to kill or die or escape. Somewhere, in what passed for a rational part of his mind there was the idea that if he killed Mia Eveline would kill him and then they'd both be free.

In the end Lucas had to come in, beating him back with a length of pipe while Mia crawled out of the cage, a bloody, unrecognizable mess.

The beating Lucas gave him had been bad enough that it left him unable to stand.

Like before Eveline fussed over him, demanding that Lucas bring him better food than rats, which he ate willingly, if only to prevent her from forcing him.

Eventually he recovered and so did Mia. The next time Eveline brought her to visit there was no trace of the damage that he'd done to her.

It was fear that kept them away from each other that time, and every time since, but Eveline wouldn't have any of it.

In the end they'd be next to each other, arms over Eveline's shoulders, like a real family as Eveline so often put it, as though by repeating it she'd make it true. She'd force Mia to read to her, a different book each time from a seemingly inexhaustible store of children's books. The latest was a multi-chapter piece of work, something about rabbits and it was horrible. Not just because of the content of the book, but because Lucas stayed around listening to it, because it was 'one of his favorites' talking about how 'I used to have ma read it to me every night, even though I was old enough to read it myself'. He seemed to know the thing by heart, reciting favorite parts out loud along with Mia.

Listening to Lucas was bad enough, but the worst part was how happy it made Eveline, one big happy family, she would say with a smile that was too innocent for what she was.

When he was alone, with Eveline out of his head and able to think, it made him wonder what kind of people the Bakers were before it all happened. Good people, Jack and Marguerite and Zoe at least. Lucas, never.

Eveline had come and ruined it all, destroying those three and giving Lucas the excuse to act on his sadistic desires.

The door to the room creaked open.

It was hard to see in the dark, but he didn't need to see to know who it was. No jangle of keys, no whispering in his mind.

Mia.

She lingered in the doorway for a long time, leaning against it as though she was too weak to stand on her own.

On rare occasions, when she could escape Eveline's control and Lucas' notice she'd sneak away and spend time with him. Sometimes they'd talk, other times she'd just stand there and cry.

"It's not going to be much longer Ethan."

What? Why?

He tensed, sat up a bit straighter, waiting for an explanation. Had Mia managed to get another email out, send it to someone who could save them?

Instead of answering, Mia slowly approached the cage. She hadn't turned on the lights and needed to be careful not to trip over anything and make any noise. It wasn't much, but every possible precaution was necessary, for all the good it did.

Ethan stood up.

Mia froze at the sound of the chains rattling against the floor.

She hated to see the state he was in, what Lucas had done to keep him from escaping. He could tell it pained her, but she came anyway, when it was safe for her to slip away and talk to him.

"Eveline, she's," Mia took a deep breath, "She's finally dying Ethan. She's not dead yet, but soon. The E-Type weren't designed to last, the only reason she's made it this far was the stabilizers we injected her with and she hasn't had a dose since she escaped. She can't make it much longer."

He nodded.

Mia remained where she was, staring at him in the darkness.

What she was saying was good, but why did she sound so frightened? If it was true that Eveline was dying then they still had a chance, they could still escape.

He reached out through the bars of the cage, the rebar impaling his wrists catching against them preventing him from doing much more than sticking his hand out.

"We'll be free Ethan, and then…"

Mia reached out and brushed her fingers against his, pulling them back abruptly when he shifted, trying to reach out further so that he could hold her, comfort her.

They'd made it this far. They could make it to the end.

But she only shook her head and left. It was to hide the fact that she was crying, but he could hear her sobs as she walked down the hall.

o0o

 _Mia didn't know why she went down to visit Ethan as often as she did, or at all really. It was safer than looking for Zoe, she supposed, better than talking to herself. Because in the rare moments she was lucid she couldn't stand to be alone._

 _Evie really was dying and saying it out loud helped. It was only the mutamycete holding her together at this point and eventually that would fail, just like it had in testing. That was what made the E-Type a success, a potent B.O.W., that would rapidly age and then die without regular serum injections. She was a perfect success, acting exactly as she was supposed to, for all the good it did now._

 _Soon._

 _That was what she kept telling herself, soon she'd be in control of herself again. She'd still be infected, because the mold didn't die with the E-Type. To the contrary, infected individuals like herself, the Bakers and even Molded in the final stages, were able to continue to function when isolated from an E-Type, another factor that made it such a good weapon; if kept in a controlled situation they could be used to manufacture more B.O.W.s. Such a versatile creation._

 _So Evie would die and she'd still be infected, which was a good thing, because to escape she'd still need to get past Lucas and that would take all of the enhanced strength and durability that the mold gave her._

 _She'd get away, contact her employers and then…_

 _Hopefully she was resistant enough that treatment was still an option after all this time, otherwise she'd be working in the labs from the wrong side of the glass. Molded wouldn't attack someone in an advanced state of infection, like she was, unless an E-Type ordered them to._

 _The immediate worst case scenario was that her employers would make her help with the cleanup, dragging Molded into crates to be carted off and examined in the lab. She could handle that. There was a lot she could handle, things she wouldn't have thought possible three years ago._

 _She'd been through hell, but in a month at most she'd make it out on the other side._

 _If they made her help work with the Molded in the labs, she could handle that, test the application of mutamycete infectees as B.O.W.s._

 _She could handle that._

 _And if she was lucky she could pull in some favors, nothing big, just enough that a small act of mercy be allowed._

 _She'd ask that they kill Ethan._

 _Except, she reminded herself, the Molded in the cage in the basement wasn't Ethan anymore. There wasn't anything left of him, just the B.O.W. that had grown around him, replacing him the way stone replaced wood with petrified trees._

 _Evie had kept the Molded because she'd been desperate for a family, enough so that she could pretend that the thing was more than a mindless monster, a puppet under her control. Evie wasn't sane, not by any human measure, so it wasn't hard to imagine that she'd fail to realize that in infecting Ethan she'd destroyed him. As had happened with so many of the victims the Bakers had brought for her, the mutamycete had overwhelmed him, consuming everything to fuel its growth._

 _Mia was sure that her employers would allow her to request that much, that one specific Molded be destroyed rather than brought in for testing. That way at least she'd be letting Ethan rest in peace._

 _Because there was nothing left of him._

 _The thing didn't attack her when she went down to talk to it, talk at it really since it's wheezing growls were just meaningless noise, but that didn't mean anything. None of the Molded attacked her and its response to her visits, getting up, pacing its cage, reaching through the bars, were all easily explained as trained behavior. Molded weren't smart, but they were more aware of their surroundings than zombies. Evie had Lucas feed it daily so it expected food when someone entered the room it was kept in._

 _That was all, it was just waiting to be fed._

 _Ethan was gone._

 _The next time she went down to the basement on her own it would be after Evie was finally dead, to say goodbye and make it real._

 _Because after that she wouldn't need the memory of Ethan to talk to._

 _She'd be back in control of her life again._

 _One way or another she'd be in control._


	22. The Truth is Out There

**Summary:** An ordinary day at work at an ordinary job in the Resident Evil setting.

 **Characters:** Carl and B, a pair of original characters, perfectly ordinary in every way. In fact you might know people like one or both of them.

 **Notes:** Based on a discussion on a forum I'm a member of. People started talking about what conspiracy theories would be like in the Resident Evil setting and it gave me an idea. Special thanks to A.W. for helping me with the technical details of B's job and sharing stories of his own experiences.

o0o

B looked at the shelves, back down at the clipboard and then up at the shelves again. Someone had packed away the frozen order that morning and whoever it was had put all the boxes in backwards, with their labels facing the wall so that no one could tell what was what. Jacob had sent him in to look for the rest of the frozen Cornish hens that were supposed to have come in and, because it was Jacob, B expected that they'd be in plain view on the top shelf, because Jacob had issues with finding anything that would require him to lift his arms higher than his shoulders or get a ladder. When he'd gotten in the freezer he'd found that Jacob had been right for once, the hens were nowhere to be found. If Jacob was right a second time that day he'd be on par with a stopped clock and reach a new best. Unfortunately the state of the freezer meant that he ended up stuck checking inventory after the department head came by to oh so casually inform him that seafood was missing half their order and that he should probably check their freezer.

The freezer door opened, "Hey B, I've got a question for you."

It was Carl from seafood. Of course it would be him, come to watch him work under the guise of helping.

"No, I haven't found your tilapia yet, but I've got some sushi grade salmon that's not even on the order, how long have you been missing it?"

"Oh, if it's not yours do you think it belongs to sushi?" Carl sounded surprised at the suggestion that the fish might belong to the seafood department rather than the meat department.

"It's not mine, it's not sushi's," B sighed as he turned around yet another box. He shouldn't have been surprised when it turned out to be a case of two pounds bags of 16-20 count shrimp, "How many pounds of shrimp are you missing?"

"Oh I don't know, I'm on my fifteen," Carl shrugged, standing by the still open door.

What was it that was so important that he had to come by to bug him on break? And did he really want to know?

"What's the question then?" B braced himself.

"Why do they call you B and not D?"

Oh, that was all. He smiled, the story of how he got that particular nickname was one he loved to tell. Taking off his hat he pointed to the little pin depicting a cartoon bee holding a filleting knife in one hand and a fish in the other, "It's Bee, and Rachel in bakery gave it to me. It all started last spring when bakery got that crazy big order for the Lilac Festival. They ended up with something like five carts of boxes lined up in front of the counter waiting for pickup. Meat was dead so I decided to swing by and give her a hand getting them out of the way. We got to talking and she mentioned that she was sick of people asking what was in the boxes and trying to open them to take a look inside. I told her to tell people that they were full of bees, then no one would want to open them. For whatever reason she thought it was the funniest thing that she'd ever heard and she started calling me Bee. The name stuck and she got Sarah from register to make me this pin."

"Ah, that makes sense," Carl nodded, "I was wondering why you had a knife-wielding bee on your hat. I thought it had something to do with the false flag incident in the Eastern Slav Republic where the U.S. government sent in an agent to try start a civil war. That it was your little way of sticking it to the man."

B wracked his brain, trying to figure out what a bee on his hat had to do with some former Soviet Bloc country. It had been on the news a few years ago and then again in the wake of the more recent Edonia incident, but the symbol of their flag had been a spider, not a bee, right? He didn't follow politics that much, especially not foreign stuff, not when there was so much to worry about closer to home. Still, he didn't want a terrorist bee on his hat, even if it was unintentional. The last thing he needed was to get chewed out by some irate customer for a cartoon bee.

Knowing that he'd probably regret it he asked anyway, "What's a bee got to do with the Slavs?"

"That's what was on the trucks they were using to transport the Tyrants that the American government shipped in to try and destabilize the country in a bid for the oil there. It failed thanks to Russian intervention," Carl said sagely, "So I saw the bee on your hat and that it had a knife that it was using to threaten a fish and just came to the obvious conclusion."

"The fish is because Sarah though I worked in your department. And wait, what's the fish have to do with Tyrants?" He wasn't even going to bother asking why, if America was after oil, Russia was the one who ended up controlling the oilfields, not to mention the whole region was still pretty unstable.

"I know, and I figured that were trying to get a jab in about the Terragrigia Panic and the U.S. government's attempt to poison Europe's seafood supplies with a new T-virus, hence the American Tyrant, represented by the bee, threatening to kill the fish, representing the European fishing industry."

Okay, the Terragrigia Panic he knew all about because it, unfortunately, directly related to his job. He knew way too much about the T-Abyss virus thanks to the number of customers who had come in and asked the dumbest questions imaginable. He'd spent a few lunch breaks helping the seafood department by doing the research necessary to reassure customers that the seafood the store carried was safe and that they weren't going to pull the fresh squid because it had eyes and tentacles, or the whole summer flounder because both of its eyes were on the same side. Because apparently of all the guys in perishables he was the only one with basic Google skills.

One customer had to be pulled from the store because they'd threatened a girl demoing their new 'zesty salmon' dinners over the 'mutant diseased fish' that would 'turn everyone into zombies'. That customer had been arrested, because you didn't scream 'zombies' in a crowded building. And then it had all happened over again with the incident with the boats, Queen Zenobia or something like that. It had been a rough time and Carl was an excellent example of why. If seafood had guys like that in it no wonder they'd needed him to look into the T-Abyss mess.

"Il Veltro was behind that," B corrected, mostly because it was something he knew about, "And it was a separatist movement."

"Yeah, that's what the government wants you to believe," Carl snorted, "The only terrorists in Europe during that whole incident were the FBC and the BSAA. They made up Il Veltro to cover their actions. Trust me, I work with fish and I know that the BSAA has its fingers in all sorts of pies. Why do you think they staged the whole incident in Africa to shut down TriCell and stop the manufacture of T-virus vaccines? Vaccines that never worked in the first place might I add. The BSAA hired them to make 'em and then, when too many people started getting suspicious, staged the whole thing to take the heat off them."

"Watch it," B put the clipboard down to avoid the temptation of throwing it at Carl, "I've got a cousin in the BSAA."

Throwing a whole box of shrimp would be a lot more satisfying.

"Eh, you can't help that," Carl missed the point and continued in a dismissive tone, "He's just a pawn, doesn't know better and probably thinks he's doing the right thing. But think about it, what's the one thing consistent across all bioterror incidents since Raccoon, one name that always shows up? Redfield."

"Chris Redfield?" B burst out laughing, "You mean the guy who stopped Wesker from releasing some virus that would have turned everyone into Kunta Kintes or whatever those things in Africa were called?"

"Please," Carl sat down on a crate of frozen chicken cutlets, "Wesker was a bit player. Redfield, or should I say Redfiend, as they've taken to calling him, was the one behind it all. He was sent in to clean up and cover up US involvement. Raccoon, Terragrigia, Kijuju, Edonia, Lanshiang and all the others. If there was an outbreak he was there for it, or his sister, puppet master of TerraSave. I mean TerraSave, that's not even subtle. And you don't really think Wesker is dead, do you? He and Redfiend were buddies back in Raccoon, in S.T.A.R.S. together, the original bioterror organization."

"Bullshit," B took a deep breath, trying to figure out if Carl actually believed what he was saying or if it was like the meat department's joke about John and the bear costume.

"Think about it," Carl crossed his arms, "How many of the survivors were in S.T.A.R.S.? All of them. And then Wesker, another S.T.A.R.S. goon, shows back up. Where did he get the money, the resources to do it all? I'll tell you where, the U.S. government, all to keep us afraid of B.O.W.s, and zombies so we don't get together and throw them all out. They're using fear to divide us and bioterror incidents as an excuse to drag us into foreign wars. When was the last time you ever saw a B.O.W.?"

"Do you actually – " B started, only to be interrupted by a page coming through on the intercom.

" _Meat, check your freezer temp, we're getting an alarm in the office._ "

He glared at Carl, "Close the door and help out or get out."

Carl shrugged, "No need to get defensive, just figured you were a smart guy and you'd want to know. There's a reason that all the Raccoon survivors work for one government agency or another you know. Every single one of them. Coincidences like that don't happen, and look at the stuff they're involved in."

Carl left without bothering to close the freezer door.

Back to work, finally.

There were times when B couldn't believe the stupid things customers did, and then his coworkers had to go and top them all. He was going to have to ask the other guys in seafood if Carl was for real or not. He honestly hoped that he wasn't, that it really was just the seafood version of the bear costume.


	23. Do not meddle in the affairs of fangirls

**Summary:** Lucas wants to set up for a game with Clancy, but he's stuck taking care of Evie. Then he gets a brilliant idea…

 **Characters:** Lucas Baker, Eveline, mentions Clancy Jarvis

 **Notes:** A crack fic, pure and simple, also proof that I am a terrible person. I got the idea from all the Lucas-centric fics out there, how RE7 fics are always about him and Clancy or him and some random college girl with a sketchy past. Not to knock those fics, but they're not what I'm into. It made me think of this and the thought made me laugh. That's never a good thing. So yeah, I apologize for this poor, tasteless attempt at humor.

o0o

 _Do not meddle in the affairs of fangirls, for you are hot and would go well with other men._

-Popular Internet meme

o0o

Stupid Ma, stupid Pa, stupid Evie.

Stupid, stupid, stupid Evie.

All of them ruining his fun because Zoe was at it _again_. They'd caught Zoe trying to help their latest guest and now they were dealing with her while he had to deal with Evie. He'd much rather be dealing with Zoe and let them have Evie. They loved the creepy little bitch so much and at least he knew most of Zoe's hiding spots. Zoe was real good at hiding, he knew from all the times when they were little she'd hide away somewhere to avoid playing games. He always found her though.

Mostly.

He'd find her this time damnit.

Except he wasn't allowed to because Evie was bored and because he liked playing games so much why couldn't he play them with _her_? He'd told them why, that his games weren't for _little girls_. Especially not little girls like Evie. They didn't get it. They never got it. When they'd been little Zoe got it a little. That was why she had her stupid trailer and stupid, stupid plans. She wanted to get out of there too.

And now they were both stuck.

Except he wouldn't be stuck for long and she'd end up even more stuck. The men he was working for had promised him a job. Hell, they'd already given him one, helped him set up a lab in the old mine and sent him all sorts of _interesting_ pictures and files. It wasn't a stupid boring job like Zoe wanted, working on old cars at the local garage, it was a fun one. One where he got to do things to people, not cars.

But he couldn't do any of that because he was stuck watching Evie and she was just as much watching him. He could see the weird little girl out the corner of his eye, which was how she mostly showed up now, but she wasn't what he had to worry about. No, there was the real Evie to look out for, the little, old lady in the wheelchair, rolling around so slow and quiet you wouldn't know she was there.

The stuff his bosses had given him made it so that he didn't have to listen when Evie told him to do stuff, but Ma and Pa did and if they listened so did he. Pa would just rough him up some, which was kind of neat at first. Watching all the bones and tendons and muscle and stuff grow back was interesting, but it got old quick. Ma though, she was different, she knew how to get him to listen, she threatened to 'take away his toys'.

He knew what that meant, she'd go through his funhouse and break everything. More than once she'd threatened to 'burn down that whole stupid barn'. He was smart enough not to test that. The papers his bosses had sent him talked about 'mindless aggression' and they hadn't been kidding.

So he was stuck taking care of Evie.

The little girl was staring at him expectantly.

So was the old woman in her chair.

"Read me a story. _Please_."

How did she do it, make begging a threat?

And he had to do something, otherwise she'd throw a tantrum.

When she threw a tantrum it wasn't like a normal little kid, yelling and breaking _stuff_. She did _things_. Those monsters of hers went berserk and everyone went crazy except for him.

Ma might finally make good on her threat of burning the barn down and Zoe wouldn't be in any state to talk her down like she usually did. Zoe and her big plans of making the old barn into a workshop for the bunch of old classic cars that she'd never get. She was going to end up stuck in a lab somewhere and he'd be the one running the show.

"Alright, what story do you want?" he tried not to sound too pissed. Evie had been getting pretty perceptive lately. It was almost like she was testing him. Like she suspected that something was _off_ and was trying to figure it out. He was too smart of course, but she'd almost gone from being creepy to frightening lately.

"A fun one, like the one with the rabbits. I really like that one!"

The little girl giggled.

The old woman let out a soft, wheezy chuckle.

Creepy, really creepy.

"How about you pick a new story?" _A shorter one_ , he thought, but didn't say out loud. He wasn't that stupid.

"The one with the dogs! That's a happy one!"

Oh hell no, he wasn't going to read her ' _Plague Dogs_ ' or anything else by Richard Adams. He'd liked those books a whole lot as a kid, but having to read them to Evie soured all that.

"That's also a very, very long one," he spoke through clenched teeth, trying to figure out how to get her to settle for a short story so he could get back to work. Their latest guest, Clancy, wasn't going to be good for fun much longer. He wasn't going to be like them, or turn into a monster. Lucas had gotten good enough that he could tell pretty quick who was going to last and who wasn't and his bosses loved that. No, poor old Clancy was going to end up dead which would mean an end to the fun and games and he wanted to get as much out of him as he could. He really wanted to get back to work setting up his latest game as soon as possible and to make the game work he needed to get the old air compressor up and running.

Evie pouted, not a good thing.

He had to think fast, before she started a game of her own, one like 'How Many Molded Does it Take to Catch Lucas and Pull His Arms Off?' That was one she really liked.

"How about you go play with your mommy? She's probably getting awful lonely down there," it was worth a try, especially since even though he had to help take care of her, playing with Mia was off limits.

"Mommy's been bad."

That was a new one.

New stuff with Evie was never good.

New stuff…

That was it!

Back when she and Mia had first showed up, before things started getting too strange, and then later in an attempt to bargain with Evie, Zoe had taught her to read. Evie could read her own stupid story.

"That's too bad?" Lucas wasn't sure how to react to Mia being 'bad', but saying something was probably the right thing to do, "But I've got a great idea! I'm gonna show you something really neat."

That cheered her up, she always liked his 'neat things'. It was one good thing about her, that she appreciated his idea of fun.

Evie the giggling little girl bounded alongside him.

Behind him he could hear the soft hiss of oiled wheels turning.

"Alright, alright, alright!" he cheered for the two of them, mostly himself, as he rummaged around, looking for one of his old laptops, nowhere near as fast or as good as the ones his bosses sent him. Those ones were top notch. A few quick clicks and there was no way Evie would get into his stuff without guessing four passwords and if she tried to change any of the settings or mess with anything she wouldn't have permission without those same passwords. All she could do was go on the internet, which was exactly what he wanted, "Here we go!"

He put the computer down on the table for her.

The old woman wheeled up to it.

The little girl frowned.

"Your computer? What's fun about that? All you do is look at pictures and type up boring stuff."

"The internet!" he encouraged, "I know you can read and with the internet you can read all the stuff you want! Look, I'll show you!"

A few quick clicks and he was on Wikipedia, scrolling through a list of bioterrorists, something he was sure Evie would find fun if she liked _Plague Dogs_ so much.

"Ooh, look there!" The little girl pointed at the screen, "Was that the one where…"

"Click and find out," Lucas suggested.

She did just that and less than ten minutes later she was utterly engrossed, letting him slip away and get back to work.

Just like always, he'd outsmarted them all.

Soon he was just as engrossed as she was, trying to figure out if he could jury-rig what he needed with the parts he had laying around or if he should raid Zoe's camper for parts. The last time he'd tried she'd shot him. It had been the only time he'd seen her slip up and do something crazy and she'd actually apologized afterwards, a crying mess. That had been over a year ago and he hadn't done it since.

Which was reason to try, wasn't it?

If she was back there she'd be all messed up from what Ma and Pa did and seeing her messed up might be neat. It also might mean that she'd be kind of crazy.

If she was there was no telling what she'd do.

That would be fun.

Could he outsmart a crazy Zoe?

What would she do if she caught him?

What would she do after she caught him?

Maybe she'd be all upset and apologize to him and he could use that to his advantage, make her do stuff.

Blackmailing her into doing things had always been fun.

Maybe he'd make her help get rid of Clancy when the games were over.

She hated dumping the bodies even more than she hated putting the Molded away.

That would be fun. She'd be all crying and upset and he'd pretend to be upset too, because that made it better and then he'd make her get rid of the body on her own. Then he'd make her tell him about it and that would be horrible for her and fun for him because of how horrible she'd make it sound.

Sheesh, it was just a dead guy.

Hmm, that valve for the compressor though.

He needed to get that taken care of first because until he did there would be no games, no pissed off maybe crazy Zoe and certainly no body.

Or there would be a body in about a week whether or not he got his game setup. That, he figured, was about how much time old Clancy had on his own.

Time limits always made things more fun, for him at least.

A lot of their guests tended to waste them crying and begging, which got boring fast.

There were only so many ways a person could beg for their life, though some of the girls were pretty creative about it. That one college girl, before she'd started getting messy at least…

He'd asked his bosses about that one, even found a way to phrase it all nice and professional, called it 'diminished impulse' control and asked them if that was a thing with people who got infected by Evie. The answer had been of course, the violent and self-destructive urges were the result of that. Lucas was willing to consider what that girl had tried self-destructive. It had been fun leading her on though.

Until she got too messy and ended up a Molded.

A little squeak.

Evie needed her chair's wheels oiled again and he'd have to do it before Ma started getting on his case. But he'd hold out as long as he could. The noise was a feature, not a bug, let him know when she was sneaking around.

Impressive that she made it this far though.

Whatever it was that she wanted must have been really important.

Best play dumb.

"Is Clancy still alive?" The little girl, only there at the edge of his vision, asked with breathless excitement.

"Of course he is!" Lucas let out a mental sigh of relief, "Do you think I'd throw the party without you?"

She loved watching the games he set up and she knew even better than he did when one of their guests was about to die or go wrong and get messy.

"Good," old woman and little girl together.

She was really excited. Really, _really_ excited.

The little girl was dancing around the room, climbing up on things and making a mess. Except the mess wouldn't be there when she was gone. Like the rest of them he still saw stuff sometimes, but unlike the rest of them he knew it wasn't real.

"I read a lot of stuff!" She clapped and stood in front of him, suddenly gravely serious, "I found a whole site full of stories. I went there looking for stories like the rabbit one, and there were. But I found other stories, better ones too. There's a thing called slash…"

She giggled and…blushed?

Slash? Yeah, he knew that, like the old slasher films Ma'd never let him watch when he was little, afraid that he'd get nightmares. Nightmares? Yeah right, they'd given him ideas, especially those Jigsaw movies. They'd been real fun, especially the ones were the victims only thought there was a way out, but in reality the game had been rigged from the start. Those movies were hilarious. The first time he saw one he'd laughed and laughed and laughed until he was nearly sick. He'd even built some of his own traps after that, small things that Ma and Pa wouldn't find, except now it didn't matter.

"People hurt people a lot in those stories, a lot like what you do with Clancy," a proclamation of extreme gravity, but there was a mischievous glint in her eye. The kid could be kind of almost cute when she wanted to.

"Yup, just like what I do with Clancy," he laughed, "If you want I can find some slasher movies and you can watch them on the computer. Just don't tell anyone or I'll get my hide tanned."

Her eyes lit up, pure awe.

"I mean beaten Evie. Pa'll beat me. He's not going to skin me and tack it to the shed," he clarified, though with the way Pa was now there was no telling.

Hope remained, "Are you sure?"

"Yes, maybe? No. I don't know Evie, I don't know," because she might find a way to make it happen and he didn't want her to make him a liar or decide to prove him one.

"I want to watch," she giggled.

Watch what? The movies? The game he had planned for Clancy? Him getting skinned alive? There was a lot that she could want to watch.

"We can go back to the house and I can start up a movie for you," he tried, hoping he'd guessed right. One in three wasn't too bad odds. Hmm, thinking of odds…If he didn't get the compressor going he still had that generator and some old car batteries…

"I don't want to watch some dumb movie," she pouted, "I want to watch here."

"But the party's not ready yet," he reminded gently, "That's what I was working on while you read."

"Silly, you don't need a party," the little girl scolded.

The old woman leaned forward in her chair, excitement hanging over her like a cloud of flies.

"I'm not going to do anything to hurt him until the party's ready," he pouted back.

"Then don't hurt him anymore!" Evie giggled, "Make up to him and then hurt him some more when he does it wrong."

"Does what wrong?" he asked slowly, suddenly feeling like they were talking a different language, "I don't follow."

"Like the stories I read dummy," she rolled her eyes, "I ship you and Clancy!"

"What? Where?" That was some internet slang that he didn't know. What kind of sites had she been going to?

"Right here," she was giggling too hard to say much more, "Go get Clancy and…"

She trailed off into more giggles. Even the old woman was having a hard time breathing from laughing to hard. Was this it? Was she going to kick off from not being able to breath over some dumb thing she found on the internet? How would he tell that one to his bosses, ' _Dear bioweapons corporation, that weapon you were so interested in? The one you had me watching for like two and a half fucking years? She giggled herself to death over a thing she read on the computer. You might want to fix that._ '

It might not be all bad though. They knew she was going to die soon so he didn't have to tell them how, that it was his fault.

Kind of.

Indirectly.

Things had been starting to get boring and once she died he could report it to his bosses, watch what happened to his family and Evie's Molded for a bit and then it would be time to start the real work, away from here.

And as much as he'd miss playing with guys like Clancy, it was a good thing because

 _It had been forever since he'd had a good blowjob._

Which was true, but where had that thought come from?

It was a good idea though, one he'd have to wait on at least until Evie died and he could get away from here. Or they caught another girl.

Whichever came first.

Evie was looking at him, little girl rocking on her heels, old woman swaying ever so slightly in her chair.

She licked her lips, kind of predatory looking. Like a real mean dog sizing you up before deciding to take a bite of you, "Well, aren't you going to get Clancy?"

"Evie," he warned, "What are you doing?"

Because she had to be doing something. Fuzzy thoughts were starting to creep into his head. He didn't have to act on them, but if he didn't she'd know that he wasn't for real playing her game.

The little girl danced over to the door, tilted her head, suggesting that he open it.

 _He didn't have to wait, now did he? Clancy's mouth worked just fine and if he wasn't willing he didn't have a choice, did he? A hole was a hole._

"Evie! What. Are. You. Doing." He drew it out, tried to make it a demand that had to be listened to.

"Just do it. You know you want to," her expression grew hard, the little girl showing the monster without actually changing in any way.

The slightest twitch.

"Evie, that's not how it works," he said flatly, hoping she'd drop whatever crazy notion that had entered her head. The one that she was trying to force into his.

"Yes it is," the monster pouted.

Woah!

That was more than a twitch.

All jokes of it having a mind of its own aside that had no bearing on what he was thinking. Which was

 _That he_ really _wanted that blowjob._

He shifted his weight and turned away from Evie, hoping that she hadn't noticed. Except of course she had, she was the one doing it and unless he figured something out he was going to have to make good on what she wanted.

And as little as he wanted it, he'd be able to because apparently just because she couldn't control his mind…

"Evie, this is a bad idea," he was desperate and he knew it.

"Why?" she appeared in front of him, staring right at…

"I can't."

"Why not?" she looked excitedly at the evidence to the contrary.

"Because…" a moment of brilliance, "I don't have a gag for Clancy. He might bite me."

That gave her pause for all of two seconds.

"Silly, it'll just grow back," she laughed at him, "And you think that's so neat, don't you?"

Yeah, with arms and legs and stuff, but this was different, this was

 _getting to the point where it was painful. He needed to do_ something _and Clancy was just on the other side of the door, waiting. Besides, he'd planned on having fun with him, and this would be fun._

No, no it wouldn't, but if he didn't Evie would be suspicious, wonder why he of all people wasn't playing along with _her_ little games.

Hand on the door knob he paused to look back at her, the real her, "If he bites me this is your fault. You know you can't get into his head so he might…"

The old woman smiled.

She knew! The evil little bitch knew!

She thought she was playing a game with _him_. Well, he'd show _her_. First though he had to…

"Hey! Clancy I've got a surprise for you and boy is it ever a big one!" He laughed nervously, wincing at his poor attempt at humor.

On the other side of the door Clancy let out a muffled sob.

Lucas could relate, boy could he ever relate.


	24. This Mess Belongs to Someone

**Summary:** After the sinking of the Queen Zenobia the world was once again safe from bio-terror. All that remained was cleaning up the mess left behind.

 **Characters:** Assorted Original Characters

 **Notes:** I was debating on whether or not this was worth posting, but then I started watching the video feed from the Okeanos Explorer and I realized that now was the best time to post this.

o0o

Lucca Idoni boarded the vessel, the twelfth he'd been on so far that day as part of the more passive assessment effort that the BSAA was in the middle of. This one had the wonderfully trustworthy sounding name of _SeaWolf Too_ and it was a remarkably long way from its home port if its registration papers were anything to go by. If they were legitimate. He had his doubts that they were.

Then again, the boat that he'd started his morning on had been legitimate, belonging to the EFCA's boat, even if all their documentation still described them as the CFCA. That was a wonderful bit of fun, especially when the woman in charge of their presence on site, an arrogant Spaniard bitch had given him the worst dressing down he'd ever received. The worst part was that he'd had to stand there and take it because her organization was technically overseeing the whole cleanup, at least until one of the vessels there found something.

He was part of a token BSAA presence, there only because of what had been on the ship that had sunk. The odds of something dangerous actually reaching the surface had been determined to be slim, which was why he was one of the ones who'd been selected for the task. Normally he worked a desk job and had little to no experience with bioweapons of any sort, his involvement with the investigation into the FBC had been at most tangential, which made him perfect for the task at hand.

There should have been more BSAA agents present, but the agency was found it necessary to be careful after finding proof beyond all doubt that the FBC had direct involvement in the Terragrigia panic. The American agency was wasn't going down easily or cleanly and nearly every BSAA agent involved in the effort had been called in to explain exactly what they'd done on account of more than one of them having what appeared to be ties with the FBC in one way or another. Add to that the number of agents from both organizations missing and presumed dead and it was a recipe for disaster. Especially when the FBC was trying to pin blame on said deceased agents. Accusations of evidence being planted were flying from both sides and, while it was obvious that the FBC was lying, the organization's claims had to be investigated on account of no one actually being able to explain where the initial samples of the T-Abyss virus had come from. Unless that could be discovered, the FBC actually had a fairly good argument since someone had to have harvested it and refined it for use in the first place.

It was all an enormous mess, one that had him on a boat full of frightened looking college students and their irate professor as he tried to make sense of what they were doing there.

"Alright," Lucca tried again for the fourth time to get a coherent story from them, "You're with NOAA. You're very far from where you should be and we've got plenty of trouble with Americans here already, so why are you really here and who are you actually working for?"

"We're a university research vessel, registered with NOAA, but that's mostly because our university is partnered with them. Our particular group is working in tandem with the ICCAT. We're over here because our university has a boat that's set up to run an ROV that wasn't involved in any other projects at the time."

It was a lot of acronyms, but not an actual answer. Lucca waited to see if there was more and sure enough there was when one of the students chimed in with an elaborate and informative nonanswer.

"The ICCAT's convinced that if the virus is going to spread it's going to be through tuna. I mean there's the moratorium on all fishing here, but tuna move around enough that there's talk of doing a rolling shutdown of the industry based on theoretical migration rate. Right now they've got boats trying to catch representatives of each species, native and migratory. Tricell's going to be testing them in their labs to see if they're carrying the virus and – Hey!" He turned to one of the other students, a girl who was peering intently at a computer monitor and working a set of controls that operated nothing that the BSAA agent could see, "Are we equipped to take on anything potentially biohazardous? I think we've got a pole and with the right kind of rig in here so maybe we can offer assistance with that. It'll be more fun than pulling up water samples."

All the students, except for the girl at the controls, who continued to stare at the screen with a grimace of concentration, as well as the professor looked expectantly at him and it took Lucca several seconds to realize that they were waiting for his answer.

"No," it had been his default answer for most questions that day and if they took it at that maybe they wouldn't be a problem, "But still, you haven't told me what you're doing."

"Not catching fish, but we were told we could take water samples if we were careful and handed them over to one of the floating labs as soon as possible," the girl at the controls snapped back, "Mostly we're getting data, temperature, salinity, current speed and direction, that sort of stuff. You know, the basics. Other than that we're just another set of eyes down there, keeping tabs on the bottom and helping map out the debris field."

"You have divers down there!" It was the worst thing he'd heard all day, above even 'oh, we're just a fishing vessel, but we're having engine trouble and were wondering if someone here could give us a tow back in'. If he'd known that they had divers in the water he would have shut them down immediately because the list of organizations that could have anyone underwater was currently no one until the debris field was mapped and risk assessment had been made, "Get them out right now and – "

"No divers," the girl cut him off, "Get over here and see for yourself because I'm about to try and tag one of them."

"One of what?" Lucca half wondered, half demanded an answer.

"The big mutated sponge things," the girl tilted her head in a gesture for him to come over, her attention on the screen in front of her, "This one looks like it meets both criteria. It's alive and it's keeping real still."

He looked at the monitor and saw a murky underwater view, a pair of mechanical grasping claws were visible in the sides of the image. One of them had what appeared to be a makeshift spear ziptied to it. It looked like it was made out of a mop handle and barbed fishing hooks that had been straightened out. Attached to the spearhead was a little black and white box of unknown function. A few feet past that one of the things they'd taken to calling a globster undulated in place.

What they were doing finally clicked into place.

"You've got a little robot with a camera down there."

"Yes," the girl spoke softly, leaning in closer to the monitor, hands tense on the controls, "Stay still you little – hmm, not so little actually, bastard. Lining up and three, two, one, accelerate!"

She shoved one of the control sticks forward and the spear struck the globster. It thrashed and turned towards the camera, multiple rows of terrifyingly human looking teeth visible in its crooked mouth. The girl jerked the stick back as hard as she could, pulling away and leaving the head of the spear stuck in the thing.

"Thing's got teeth like a blackfish," she muttered, seemingly unconcerned by the way it was trying to bite at the dome covering the camera. Teeth silently scraped against the surface, blocking out the view of anything else.

"Or like a paccu," one of the other students, a boy with sun bleached hair matted into clumps, offered with a laugh, "We might be in trouble if that's the case."

"I'll remember to keep my fingers out of there," the girl muttered, managing to maneuver the claws to try and shove it away.

The globster lashed out, biting onto the spear handle, breaking it in half.

"Paccu all the way," the student who had first suggested the idea laughed.

The girl rolled her eyes, "You and your paccus. I don't even know why you're out here, you can do all your research in a pet store checking the L-numbers of their plecos."

"Because I'm the one with the captain's license," he laughed.

Lucca stared at him, waiting for the horror at that particular revelation to pass before turning back to the girl, "So you're tracking those things?"

"Only two of them, the Riverhead Foundation was only willing to part with two tags, but technically they should be sending us more once the paperwork goes through the hospital to pay for them. Zack put out word on the Island before we left and yeah, they're giving the school a grant, through the medical program, to give to the Foundation to get more transmitters, which technically are going to be the ones they already have because reasons, to give to us. Talk about your inter-department cooperation. Uh, pull us back a little Ceej, loofa with teeth isn't happy and we should get back to doing transects."

The sloppy looking boy who she'd been talking to shook his head, "No can do."

"Why not?" she sounded exasperated.

"I guess you didn't notice the commotion, but we've been boarded by the BSAA. They've got a little dingy tied to us and I don't think we're supposed to be moving."

The girl turned away from the monitor long enough to stare at Lucca, looking at him like she was seeing him for the first time.

"Oh," she said in a small voice, "I didn't recognize your logo and though that the guys from the ICCAT left you with us, or maybe Tricell. They've been a huge help."

"So you're tracking globsters," Lucca repeated, not sure if there had been an actual answer in the mess of words she'd said, "You're going to send the data straight to us, right?"

"Oh, it's all satellites," she shrugged, "And only if they surface. If you want to check just go to the Foundation's website and you can see. Um, I think they'll be at the bottom of the 'Tracking' page on the 'Releases' part of the site. They'll be the ones named 'Tuna Data 1' and '2' with no picture or information."

That was good, he guessed. If the globsters washed up on shore the BSAA would know, along with the rest of the world, which wasn't so good.

Lucca watched the screen, as the robot moved up and away from the globster.

Something moved below and to the left, a flash of color.

"Look," Lucca pointed at the screen, "What's that?"

The girl leaned in until her nose was practically touching the screen.

"Ceej!" she jerked back with a scream, "Mark this site on the GPS, we've got a …uh…thing? Down here and then we're going to have to pull out and contact…" She trailed off and looked at Lucca, "Contact you I guess. So yeah, we found a…body maybe? And you're the BSAA so that's your jurisdiction, right? So what do we do?"

He looked closer at the small shape however many meters below. Sure enough, it was a body. He could make out a head, arms maybe and the lower half of it seemed to be caught under a big chunk of what was probably metal.

"Can you drop down for a better look?"

The girl rotated the robot in place, the shadowy shape of the globster disappearing into the distance as it lost interest in the robot.

"Uh, sure?" now that she knew who he worked for she was far more uncertain and seemed to be looking to him for instructions.

It was a nice change of pace from the arguments he'd been getting into previously, especially with the captains and researchers on the Tricell boats.

"Give me, what do you think?" she looked over her shoulder at the professor, "Ten more feet of line, but be careful. I don't want to touch the…body."

Two of the other students immediately went over to the controls of a system of winches and pulleys and the robot began to descend.

The girl kept talking, "I mean I know we need to sanitize the whole rig before we bring it back on the boat, which I think is stupid. Tricell's probably analyzed a swimming pool's worth the water samples already in the floating labs that they're calling research vessels and only gotten three positives back so far, and that's from the deepest samples that anyone's taken. No clue how they're screening for it unless they know what they're looking for already and doing some sort of test like that. All the contaminants it's a miracle that they're not getting false positives. What is it, like ten million virus particles in every drop of seawater and three times they've managed to isolate a specific one. That's like finding a specific needle in a whole stack of needles. Real impressive tech they've got. If I was premed I'd probably be a lot more interested."

Lucca realized that she was talking just to talk. He had an aunt like that.

Her knuckles were white as she made constant little adjustments to the robot's position. The body grew more distinct through the murk. Face down, which was a mercy since it looked like the fish had been busy, the body was badly decomposed, the legs mostly gone and the arms…

"Go over to the other side," Lucca tapped at the screen, showing her where he wanted a better look.

The girl nodded, trying to keep about three meters between the robot and the body, as though getting too close might mean a contamination risk through the screen. Shadows from the robots lights created the illusion of movement as it passed directly over the body.

It lifted its head.

"Freaking Montauk shit! Crank it up!"

Lucca wondered if English was the girl's first language, because it certainly didn't sound that way. He could understand her panic though, the thing was no ordinary globster, still mostly recognizable as human the thing wore the tattered remains of a wetsuit, partially fused with overgrowths of horned, keratinous flesh. It was a lot more reactive than the globsters, resembling what he'd heard called an ooze. The last thing he wanted was for the thing to vanish into the depths.

"No!"

They all stared at him. At least they'd listened. This sort of thing was the reason he was there in the first place. He had to radio the other BSAA agents and…they didn't actually have a procedure for what to do with anything still underwater because they'd been operating under the assumption that nothing would be found unless it managed to reach the surface. No one had assumed that anyone would have little robots underwater hunting B.O.W.s.

"We have to do something about that," he gestured at the thing on the screen. It had risen unsteadily to its malformed feet and was reaching up towards the robot with long, horribly twisted arms.

"Are you authorizing us to try and fish that thing up?" the professor glared at him, "Because if that's the case I refuse. This boat and ROV are university property and I'm not going to put them or my students at risk like that."

"We'll be a legend, like the Shinnecock and its torpedo," the girl driving the robot laughed.

That was the problem, wasn't it? Not that the girl clearly didn't speak English very well, but that he was on a boat full of idiot kids and neither he nor any of the other BSAA agents present had the means to kill a thing like that.

The student with the captain's license, Lucca couldn't think of the blond as an actual captain, came to the rescue.

"Let's give the ICCAT a call. They use acoustic tags so we could probably rig something up with that. Between them and Tricell there's bound to be the resources. We tag the zombie and let them track it. Or you guys," he turned to Lucca with an apologetic smile, "You can track it if you want."

It was continuing to reach up towards the robot, some worm-like appendage having emerge from a split in its head.

Still, despite its mutations the ooze was still recognizable as having been human, which meant that it was likely only recently infected. Likely the missing mystery FBC agent that Redfield and Valentine had reported. Finding her was proof of…something. While the blond went in to the cabin to try and get in touch with someone over the radio Lucca headed back to his boat to make a call of his own. He'd get in touch with the other agents on site and see if any of them had any clue what to do about a thing like this.

He heard the professor speaking to the students, "While C.J. contacts the ICCAT team one of you see about getting in touch with those Tricell researchers, they did give a phone number, right? No sense in getting a transmitter if we don't have the means of tracking it."

It was good that they were getting Tricell in on things at least. The pharmaceutical company knew what it was doing and had been an immense help during the cleanup effort, to a large degree doing the job that the BSAA should have.

The wind changed direction, a fine mist hitting him in the face.

He could taste the salt.

What was it that the girl had said, how many viruses in the water?

Though maybe the greater concern was how many idiots on the water. As he watched the EFCA once again violated the barely enforced 'no wake' order and nearly swamped one of the smaller boats when it passed dangerously close to it, though the smaller boat was as much at fault for getting that close to begin with. Today there would be no winning and he still had a B.O.W. however many meters under the water that he had to worry about.

Which raised an interesting and unpleasant question, how far from shore was he right now and who was closest to the site? What were the rules for dealing with things in open water? Which governments and organizations would they need permission from now that they'd actually found a B.O.W.? Or was an ooze close enough to a zombie that it could be classified as a byproduct and simply disposed of? Because if it was then that would save him a lot of trouble.

He'd have to call in and find out because nothing he'd done previously had ever prepared him for something like this.


	25. Watching Time Pass

**Summary:** Time passes, but for Jill Valentine the effects of her T-virus infection linger on.

 **Characters:** Jill and Chris, mentions of others

 **Notes:** A small and familiar sort of horror. Quiet and mundane.

o0o

After all Jill had been through she never did get cleared for active duty.

It wasn't just the psychological toll that her years as Wesker's prisoner and unwilling accomplice had taken on her. A good portion of the reason was purely physical, the T-virus was still there lingering in her bloodstream, arguably dormant, possibly through some quirk of genetics, either hers or its. Arguably dormant, because anytime she'd asked about it during her year in quarantine everyone had gone suspiciously silent and became unable to maintain eye contact. A year of tests and injections, countless pills and enough blood drawn to rival anything she'd lost during combat. It had been a horrifying year, an exchange of captivity for captivity. She made it though, there were times she thought she wouldn't, but she somehow managed.

Finally, she was told that she was going to be allowed to leave, but it wasn't true freedom. Monthly medical exams for the rest of her life, just to make sure that there were no unexpected developments whatever they might be. Bi-monthly psychiatric evaluations for the same reason. Because no one knew.

The T-virus was still there.

Even if it wasn't causing her any harm it wasn't safe.

She wasn't safe.

Any injury she sustained, any contact with her blood, was a potential biohazard. Better to keep it quiet and let her retire than take any chances.

And it was something she could live with. Even if she didn't like it she could live with it.

Retiring had been the natural choice, better than being relegated to a desk job or training duty, going around giving motivating speeches to new recruits, potential recruits and whoever else would want to hear her talk, which was a surprisingly large number of people for how terrible she thought she was at it.

Even if she didn't have much of a choice when it came to her retirement, she could still choose how she felt about it and she chose to be happy, because she knew that her thoughts on a situation where the one thing, the only thing, that she could always, no matter what, have a choice about. Being Wesker's captive had taught her a lot of things, like how to endure.

Lessons that would last a lifetime.

In this case it wasn't that difficult either, she was home, safe, with Chris

She had been determined to do as much as she could, make up for lost time and enjoy the time she had at all costs.

Chris retired not long afterwards, or it was made desirable for him to retire after the last mission he went on after China. He didn't talk about it, no one explained anything about it to her and she never asked.

In the BSAA, like any military organization, there were times when you didn't ask.

His retirement from the BSAA lasted about two months before he started looking for work with other, similar organizations.

His reputation meant that each time he got a job right away, despite his ever growing list of previous jobs. Most of them lasted about a year before a combination of 'bad luck' and 'differences of opinion' gave him reason to search elsewhere.

In between jobs he took to drinking more than he probably should until he managed to find somewhere new that would take him.

The two of them never talked about the real reason why nothing ever worked out. One that was obvious, but never mentioned.

No one was going to take on someone in their fifties for a combat position, and that was what Chris always insisted on.

So they were retired together, going to places they'd meant to go when they were younger, visiting friends, the ones who were still alive, settling down, getting a house out in the country, starting a garden, doing some renovations so that they could have a finished basement for Chris to work out in, and later, when he got used to the idea of having enough free time to actually get bored, a model trainset on an elaborately set up table. It was a hobby she'd never known that he'd had an interest in, but apparently he did.

There was a nice park, with trails through the woods not too far away where they could go walking together.

When Chris started having trouble with his back the weights got smaller and the diorama grew more elaborate. Occasionally he'd call her down to look at it and she'd pretend to be interested in whatever he'd added to it or changed.

It took the place of calling her down to spot him, a process that happened so slowly that she never noticed it.

Having a house rather than an apartment had been exciting at first. They could invite friends over, throw parties, and there was time to properly celebrate the holidays.

Christmas had been the best, was still the best, even though she celebrated it by herself now rather than with friends, family, neighbors, anyone she knew from the BSAA who'd be able to stop by.

The first Christmas was thrown together haphazardly, a spur of the moment affair that lead to plans for next year.

A proper Christmas with a tree, lights, decorations and a Christmas village, which over the years grew so large it had to be kept on a table that Chris brought up from the basement.

It was fun at first, relaxing even because there was no need to worry about what might happen tomorrow, if the next mission might be their last because there was no next mission. They missed what had been, but what they had worked.

There were minor annoyances of course, weeds in the garden, shingles blowing off the roof during a storm, mowing the lawn, all the joys of homeownership, but there was plenty of time for simply enjoying it all. They had a house, they had each other and they had their friends.

They stayed in touch with countless people from the BSAA and of course the rest of the Raccoon City survivors. Barry's family grew once again, Moira finally settling down and getting married, having a kid a year or so later.

Leon stepped back, took a desk job, got married, to a woman, Chris would joke. Apparently, and this was news to Jill, Chris had always assumed that Leon was gay. He couldn't explain to her exactly why he'd come to believe that, but it was a conclusion he'd come to, possibly from something Claire had said to him once.

Going to weddings lead to talk about weddings lead to Chris proposing. There was no planning behind it, they'd been in town doing something and Chris had asked her if she wanted to get married. She'd said yes and the next thing she knew they'd gone to the county clerk's office and gotten a marriage license, which she'd thought was strange. That you needed a license just like you would for a gun or a dog. It was almost too simple to be believed. There was a ceremony, if it could be called that, overseen by a judge, attended by a few close friends and then they all went to a restaurant in town for a party where everyone ate and drank too much.

They spent their honeymoon at a bed and breakfast two towns over, trying to figure out if being married made anything different. The only thing she could think of was that she wasn't Jill Valentine anymore.

It took her a full year to get used to writing Jill Redfield when signing things or introducing herself to new people.

Sherry never visited, but she sent regular emails, keeping them up to date on what she was doing. She'd quit the DSO, was living in Europe somewhere, and though she didn't mention Jake, at least not at the start, it was heavily implied. She was the second of their group of survivors to have children, twins, a boy and a girl. Then the pictures came by the dozens, filling her inbox. Pictures of babies crawling, walking, playing with brightly colored toys, sleeping, eating, doing all the things that babies apparently did. Family pictures too, and those were strange. Seeing Sherry and a young Wesker smiling at the camera, each holding a toddler had been disconcerting. Jake really did look like his father, something Jill picked up on more that Chris. Jake couldn't help it, she shouldn't have hated him for it, but it was still there. He unnerved her, like seeing something horrifically out of place in an otherwise mundane photograph.

She and Chris talked about kids once or twice, mostly how it wasn't an option. They agreed they were both too old to be starting a family and besides, there was Jill's condition.

The T-virus, what would it do if she tried to conceive? It was something that she never brought up at the regular doctor's visits because not knowing the answer and accepting that it wasn't an option was so much easier.

The doctor's visits continued, the T-virus lingered on, no changes. She remained in remarkably good health for a woman of her age.

Days passed.

More photos of Sherry and her family.

Long, pointless phone calls with Claire, just to talk about the way things were and had been.

Time spent working in the garden, planting flowers and vegetables alike, learning what would and wouldn't grow.

Surprise visits from Leon and his wife because everything Leon did had to be spontaneous.

Years passed.

Christmas parties at home where they spent the whole week getting ready.

Going to Clair's graduation when she decided to go back to college and finally get a degree, like she'd been saying she would.

Sherry having another kid that was frequently mentioned in the emails, but never seen in the photographs and then yet another that was.

Chris quitting drinking, this time for good.

Remodeling the kitchen, because the horrible way the cabinets were setup had been something they'd both complained about for years and why not.

Things were good.

Even when they weren't good they weren't awful.

Chris would occasionally complain about his bad knee, which was sometimes the left and sometimes the right.

During a videochat with Sherry Jill got to see the mystery middle child walk into the room to complain loudly that her sister had been in the bathroom for hours and she was going to get a screwdriver to take it off the hinges if someone didn't do something now.

There was the one really bad storm where the oak tree next to the driveway blew over, narrowly missing the cars and blocking them in until they were able to cut it up and clear it away.

Jill noticed that she didn't need to keep dying her hair, that the roots were coming in brown again rather than bleached white.

Chris spent more and more of his time in the garage cleaning his gun collection, which had grown on and off over the years. When he did go down to the basement it was more to work on his model trains and less to exercise.

She thought nothing of it until one day there was a crash and then a pained call for help from the basement. Chris had decided that it was time to start getting back in shape again, he'd been letting himself go for too long and he'd decided to start easy, but his bad knee had given out on him.

Which bad knee was the question that she didn't ask, though it was on her mind.

She helped him up the stairs, his whole body tense with the pain that he was trying to hide, her supporting most of his weight. At his insistence she brought him to his chair in the living room.

That night they ate dinner while watching TV. She remembered what was on that night, some activist judge talking about how ruling that individuals with certain chronic medical conditions should not be barred from serving in the armed forces were a good thing, that only good would come of it.

"B.O.W.s," Chris had said unnecessarily, "They're talking about letting the military use B.O.W.s."

That was part of the reason that they hardly ever watched television. The T-virus vaccine had been a cause for celebration, but everything else was just too depressing. The situation in China, what Russia was doing in Europe. The ultimate outrage, an attack on the BSAA headquarters using a modified version of the C-virus.

That was what Jill thought of and brought it up in response to Chris' comment. He shrugged and looked away.

Since the C-virus attack they hadn't talked much about the BSAA. The organization was changing, having lost a great deal of influence and funding since the vaccine effort. Zombies had been what people had been afraid of and the vaccine meant that zombies weren't a thing anymore and actual B.O.W.s were too rare for the public to take seriously.

Things changed, people, organizations, everything, except…

She remained in remarkably good health for a woman of her age.

Chris spent two days in the chair in the living room, needing her help to get back and forth from it to the bedroom or the bathroom, before he was recovered enough to make it around the house on his own, though the stairs continued to give him trouble for a week after that.

Several months later Chris casually suggested that maybe it was time to think about cleaning up in the basement.

She knew what he meant, went down to help him disassemble exercise equipment, put it in boxes, out of sight, out of mind, carefully move the weights. Carefully, Chris reminded her again and again as they worked together, she might hurt herself.

The weights Chris had been using when he hurt himself hadn't been that heavy.

Chris got her a puppy for her birthday, a fine specimen of some breed she'd never heard of, to accompany her when she went for her daily walks, because he hadn't been going with her all that often anymore. It was because of his knee or back, he was vague about which.

The dog's name was Maximillian, but she called it Mooch.

She walked it every day, but the dog liked him better, of course. In the mornings it would run up to her with the leash in its mouth, pestering her until they went out and drove to the park. When they returned it ran straight to Chris and spent the rest of the day following him around the house and yard.

Life went on.

And sometimes it didn't.

At first the funerals were for acquaintances who were still in the BSAA.

Then it was Barry.

That had been hard, but Barry had been old, his health hadn't' been that great, even before the diagnosis, and he'd refused treatment, insisting on quality over quantity. It wasn't unexpected, for what little it mattered.

Leon was the first bad one.

Not Leon, but his wife. A car accident, driving to the store, head on collision, dead before the ambulance even got there.

It had been a closed casket affair.

Leon had been inconsolable.

The whole thing haunted Jill for days.

Death happening just like that.

Random.

No warning.

For the first time she was glad that she'd been forced to leave the BSAA, glad that Chris had ended up in the same situation. Similar, but so very different.

Once they went out to eat, no special reason, neither of them felt like cooking that night so they went out to a new place that had opened up to see what it was like. Afterwards, when she'd paid for their meal, because it was her turn to pay, the waitress made some comment about how it was so nice of her to treat her father to dinner like that.

Chris had laughed about that one for weeks, called her his trophy wife every chance he got.

The mistake was repeated more and more often until it stopped being funny and became another thing that they both acknowledged was a problem, but didn't really talk about, like Chris' bad back and knees.

Life went on.

Parties and funerals.

Holidays and time spent missing those who weren't there to celebrate them.

Jill's garden and Chris' model train setup both got larger over time and they continued to pretend to be interested because they were still so very much in love. Little things like a few differing interests didn't matter because spending time together was so important.

As time passed the list of people that they could no longer spend time with grew.

Chris and Jill agreed that the two of them were lucky, that as bad as things had gotten, everything worked out for the best in the end.

Chris' knees finally got bad enough that he decided that going to a doctor about them might be a good idea. Different treatment options were discussed and he opted for surgery, because there were some things Chris was adamant about. His distrust for a lot of more recent medical developments was one of the big ones. Talk of biotechnology, as applied to medicine put both him and Jill on edge because they'd been there for the start of it. She'd been certain that Chris was going to punch the pushy young doctor that kept trying to recommend some new, safe, noninvasive treatment that worked via stimulating cellular regeneration.

It was an up and coming thing in the world of medicine the doctor had said, but to Chris it was another sign of how much things had changed, that technology that had its origins in experiments conducted by Umbrella was now an accepted thing.

Gene therapy was growing increasingly common and the things retroviruses were used for…

Neither of them understood it and they found it frightening for that reason. The nightmares of one generation had faded to mundane fields of study for the next. Research was being conducted, decisions were being made by people who hadn't even been alive when Raccoon City had been bombed off the map.

Chris recovered from his surgery, the dark mood he'd been in before and immediately after it vanishing as soon as he realized the constant, low grade that had been bothering him for years was gone. He'd commented to her, and it had frightened her, that he'd been in pain for so long that he'd forgotten what it was like to not hurt.

There was still his back, but he was open to surgery for that too, if it was an option, because not being in pain had apparently opened him up to new things.

Once he was done with physical therapy they decided to celebrate, go on a vacation together, a second honeymoon, a real one this time. They went to the Florida Keys, did all the sightseeing and went to eat at all the places tourists went and ignored the looks they got when the hotel staff, the wait staff at restaurants and random people they struck up conversation with learned that they were husband and wife.

It had taken years, but the doctors with the BSAA finally brought up the topic, that she was _still_ in remarkably good health for a woman of her age and that it might be a good idea to run some additional tests, some more comprehensive ones looking for different things that might have been missed by previous testing.

When the results came back she learned what telomeres were.

She wasn't aging on a cellular level.

Or at all.

Biologically speaking, the doctor told her, she was probably somewhere in her late twenties. It was hard to tell because of everything else, but she was her physical prime, which suggested possibly regenerative processes and would she like to submit to further testing?

She went home and when Chris saw the look on her face he'd assumed the worst so she'd had to tell him the news. He took it well, better than she had.

Not long after that she stopped going to funerals when they happened and get-togethers with friends became less and less of a thing.

Talking to Sherry helped.

The G and T-viruses were different, but in some ways they had similar enough effects in the long term.

Sherry made things easier.

Over time the two of them became close friends, sharing things that they couldn't with anyone else and seeking reassurance from each other.

Eventually she ended up getting talked into, or talking Sherry into, a visit. Jill wasn't sure who had convinced who of what. Sherry, Jake and middle and youngest daughter, Beatrix and Trudy, who were still living at home, to save money until they finished college, all came to visit and Chris was okay with it, mostly.

Over the years Jake had started looking more and more like his father. It was something about his eyes, Jill decided, the way he didn't just look at things, he glared like everything offended him on some personal level.

They stayed a week and the first day had been awkward to say the least. Jake and Chris had spent the whole time scowling at each other. Jill fought back some horrible emotion that she couldn't identify every time she saw Jake. Trudy started panicking when her laptop wouldn't boot up. Mooch the Second, the new ungrateful dog who loved only Chris, walks and food, in that order, had decided that Beatrix was the second best person ever despite her displeasure at his fur getting everywhere, and was following her so closely that she tripped over him anytime she wasn't watching her feet. Beatrix herself was even more disconcerting in person than the pictures that Sherry had emailed to them over the years.

By the end of the week Jake and Chris had, somehow, ended up best friends. Trudy had gotten a new battery for her laptop, which solved the problem. Beatrix had come to accept Mooch's affections and had told Chris that she wanted to get a job with the BSAA once she finished school and got her accounting degree. She'd asked him if he thought he could help her get a job with the organization. As an accountant because she hated guns.

To his credit Chris hadn't laughed.

Jill and Sherry had done a lot of talking as well, mostly about how Sherry could cope with, well, all of it. In the end what helped Sherry, the kids, wasn't applicable, but Jill still took comfort in knowing that there was someone out there that was in the same situation.

It was less horrifying for Jill to compare herself to the desperately cheerful young woman than it was to Wesker.

More time passed.

Sherry became a grandmother.

Beatrix got her job with the European branch of the BSAA, as an accountant.

Claire put the teaching degree she'd gotten to good use.

Leon remarried, to a woman, because as far as Chris was concerned, the joke wasn't going to get old.

People finally stopped mistaking Chris and her for father and daughter. Now they assumed she was his granddaughter.

Jake died, suddenly, in his sleep. A heart attack out of nowhere.

She and Chris went over to Europe for the funeral. It was the first funeral Jill had gone to in years and she only managed it by telling herself that it was Wesker in the coffin, not her best friend's husband. It worked, even if it meant that she spent the whole time staring off into the distance at nothing when she wasn't trying to comfort Sherry.

Symbolically burying Wesker helped her put things behind her, accept what had happened and what would and wouldn't happen.

On the flight back she and Chris had a long talk.

There were treatments, he reminded her, if she was worried about things.

Treatments that had outraged him on principle when they'd first become a thing.

They were expensive, prohibitively so, and not without risks, but if she was worried he might be able to pull some strings and go in for them. People knew who he was, his name, his reputation and the doctors were sure to agree, despite his bad knees and back. Once he was out of recovery, which might take longer than normal since it was typically younger individuals who went through the process, it would just be a matter of working for whatever company funded the treatment for however long it took to pay them for it.

It was clear that he'd done his research, that it was something that had been on his mind for a long time.

She said no, that she wouldn't make him do anything like that for her and he'd been relieved.

Chris loved her in the same way he did everything, in the extreme and to the point where there was no questioning it. That he'd been willing to even consider such things so she wouldn't have to be alone some day in the not too distant future said so much about him.

She couldn't make him do that, go against what he believed in just because she was afraid.

That he cared enough to make an offer like that was painful in ways that she couldn't put into words.

Back home Chris got her a new dog because they'd spent enough time without one. Instead of going with a pedigreed Chesapeake Bay Retriever from a breeder like he had previously, they went and rescued a half grown and untrained mutt from an animal shelter. The dog was named Phoebe by the shelter staff, spelled Pheebee, because it had come in without a name.

Jill called it Bee and there was no question as to why Bee had been given up and hadn't found despite being young and small, two traits that the shelter staff had mentioned were what people always wanted. Bee was ugly, short, wide, a face that made her look like a hunter class B.O.W. with fur, short bristly fur that wasn't pleasant to pet and sparse, wispy longer hairs that grew in random places on her back. She dug holes in the garden like a mole and chased bids and mice like a cat, littering the yard with small, broken bodies. Her greatest triumph being a whole family of rabbits. The noise had reminded Jill of things that she'd forgotten so thoroughly that the realization she'd forgotten had been as much a shock as the memories.

In addition Bee didn't like walks and chewed through half a dozen leashes until Jill started using a chain.

Unlike Mooches one through three Bee managed to love both Chris and her equally, which made up for her other flaws.

Jill had doubted it at first, but Chris had known what he was doing when he picked Bee.

When it finally happened, less than a year later, at least Bee was there for her because she didn't have anyone else. Not aging had made it hard for her to make and keep friends. If not for the dog she wouldn't have had anyone to help her pass the time when she couldn't be there with Chris, waiting for good news from the doctors, that he could go home.

Or any news at all.

Waiting and the smell of hospitals brought back bad memories and Chris wasn't in much of a state to reassure her.

The stay at the hospital was mercifully short and in the end no extraordinary measures were taken.

Bee spent a week searching the house and yard, not her usual sniffing patrol, but a frantic search, running in and out of rooms, looking everywhere for Chris. Jill tried to comfort the dog, herself as she took care of what needed to be done.

Another funeral that she had to attend, the last one that she was truly obligated to go to.

Afterwards people could continue to die as they always had, without her.


	26. Trypanophobia

**Summary:** The ordeals a the brave men and women in the BSAA face goes above and beyond what the average civilian might imagine: there are the biannual physical exams

 **Characters:** Chris Redfield, an OC doctor

 **Notes:** Originally the idea came to me after joking about the steroids Chris must have used to get so huge for RE5. I got a fair amount written, but couldn't get to a punchline. Then many months later there was a comment someone made on one of the forums I go to that fit this idea perfectly and I worked back into this fic, throwing that idea in as a minor detail.

o0o

Chris smiled nervously, trying to reassure himself as he waited. There were some situations where it was hard to feel brave. A mob of zombies heading his way when he was low on ammo and waiting for help that probably wouldn't be getting there anytime soon was a breeze. Massive B.O.W.s prowling in the darkness of an abandoned warehouse were nothing to worry about. Hell, he'd face a Tyrant unarmed if it came to that. Honestly, it would have been a relief if a Tyrant were to burst through the wall and into the room he was sitting it. It would have saved him a lot of worry.

Unfortunately, no rampaging B.O.W.s were going to appear and save him from this particular ordeal, the biannual BSAA physicals. This time was worse than normal, because, thanks to some sort of mistake, he had to go through it all again.

It was an open secret that he started worrying a month beforehand, going through great pains to see to it that his appointment was one of the very last to happen. There were times when he was tempted to see just how far he could push things and maybe just not show up, but he had a feeling that might be pushing things too far. So he endured the jokes about how the legendary Chris Redfield, was terrified of needles.

That wasn't true, not exactly. Just like how he hadn't fainted during that one blood test, his whole body had simply gone completely limp and he'd kind of started to slide off the table when the doctor came at him with a needle. He hadn't hit the floor that hard and didn't see what all the fuss was about, they'd just had to reschedule his appointment for a later date and Dr. Pintauro had been very understanding about that.

His reputation as a hero had its privileges and as such he was able to see to it that the infinitely understanding Dr. Pintauro handled all his mandatory medical exams. That meant that there were a number of times where he spent a bit longer in quarantine after a mission than he would have otherwise, but it was a small price to pay for peace of mind.

This time not even Dr. Pintauro could reassure him though, nothing could.

He'd already gone through the physical a week ago and he'd been called back for a second, more comprehensive follow up. That was something that just didn't happen.

"Agent Redfield," a short, gray haired woman said gravely as she opened the door to the exam room, "Let's get this done with."

"Do you really need to sound so cheerful about this?" he laughed despite himself. Her dry sense of humor was part of why he preferred her for these exams. She at least had a sense of humor, unlike most of the other doctors, "I mean some intern probably just lost the paperwork."

She didn't smile back, "It's not paperwork that the intern managed to misplace and that, combined with certain discrepancies, mean either I've made a serious mistake or we've got a serious problem on our hands so I'm not in a good mood right now. We're going to start from the beginning and treat this like it's your first exam and hope that the issue resolves itself."

"Right," he fought back the urge to stand up as she came into the exam room. For such a small woman she carried herself with a sense of authority that you could actually feel. There were times when it was hard to believe that she was just a civilian doctor who happened to be working for the BSAA.

"Of course," taking a pen out of her pocket she flipped through the papers on her clipboard, "Everything's supposed to be in order so let's get the questions out of the way first."

"Can we just say that everything's the same as it was last time?" he asked hopefully.

"No, because I want to believe that the mistake was mine and that what the intern did is just an unfortunate coincidence," her tone made it clear that she liked asking the ever growing list of questions as much as everyone in the BSAA liked answering them, "Now first question, have you received any injuries while on active duty since the date of the previous exam?"

"No," he answered quickly then corrected himself, "None that broke the skin."

Dr. Pintauro looked up from the clipboard, her lips pressed into a thin, angry line. He knew exactly why too, last week he'd answered no and left it at that. Her expression became carefully, coolly, neutral as she waited for him to continue.

He slumped down, not wanting to elaborate, but knowing that he had to, "I slammed my hand in a car door during what was technically a mission."

"Ah yes, the infamous Black Buoy incident," Dr. Pintauro gave him a knowing smile, "Quite the impressive interagency effort if I recall correctly. How many different anti-bioweapons organizations were represented there that week?"

"How do you know about –" Chris started then considered what she had said, "Actually, no, I don't want to know. But, yeah, that was where it happened."

Helping oversee the closing of a bioresearch facility near a seaside resort town, best known for its beaches and bars hadn't exactly been the BSAA's finest moment. He'd been the one stuck filling out paperwork and issuing official reprimands after several agents had gotten the bright idea to go bar hopping after the old lab was shut down without incident. The paperwork had been even more of a nightmare because of the fact that it was a joint effort between several different organizations and because he'd been 'assisting' a DSO operative at the time he'd been injured there had been two organizations worth the paperwork for him to fill out. Said operative had been too drunk to stand and the assistance had been loading him into the back seat of a taxi so one of his slightly more sober companions could get him safely back to the hotel they were staying at. Knowing that the effort was known by the name of the bar where most of the real 'action' had taken place wasn't exactly something he was proud of. It could have been worse though, the bar across the street was named 'Halfast Eddy's' and on the other side town there was a third called 'Murphy's Back Alley Tavern' all of which could have just as easily been where it had happened..

She nodded, "Did the injury heal normally? Remember, healing more quickly than expected counts as an abnormality."

"It healed normally," Chis said, not sure why that last part was necessary. It didn't break the skin and there hadn't been any B.O.W.s or biological agents present at the lab, much less any of the bars and hotels where the real excitement had been. Everything had been taken care of during the first four days and the rest of the week had turned into one big party, drinking, swapping stories of missions over the years and generally having a good time. It was the closest thing to a vacation that he'd had in years and the best part had been that Jill been part of the team that arrived after the lab was cleared out, just in time for the 'action'. The two of them had taken advantage of those few days off and their respective teams had been very understanding of their desire for time alone. There had been jokes of course, but that was to be expected given that it was an open secret that their relationship wasn't strictly professional.

"Alright, since I don't want to be here all night I'm going to just list off the biological agents known to have been used during incidents you were present for. All I want you to do is tell me if it's incomplete when I get done," without waiting for a response she began naming a series of different strains of virus that the BSAA had dealt with over the years.

He knew that there were a lot, but hearing it all spelled out was a stark reminder of all the different ways he could have died. There was hardly a thing out there that he hadn't been at risk of exposure to over the years. As she went through the list he didn't interrupt her.

It was complete, as far as he could tell.

Dr. Pintauro didn't seem quite ready to believe him. Instead of moving on to the general health questions she looked back down at her clipboard, "Do you want me to repeat it just to be sure?"

"No," he shook his head, wanting things to be over so whatever mistake had been made could be corrected. Then he could get an explanation of what this was all about and the two of them could probably have a good laugh about it.

She nodded and continued with the questions, moving onto medical history, where he once again repeated a list of injuries that got longer and longer every year.

Dr. Pintauro watched him carefully the whole time, nodding every so often in the kind of route, mechanical way people did when they weren't really interested in what was being said, but still had to pay attention.

So old injuries weren't a concern, newer ones were.

What exactly was the discrepancy?

When he was done she moved on to the next set of questions, an odd mix of mundane things that wouldn't be out of place on any ordinary physical and questions highly specific to his job in the BSAA.

It was just like every other time and he gave the answers by route, knowing exactly what was expected for each one. The questions never changed, the order never changed, he didn't even have to listen. Yes, no, no, no, yes, yes, occasionally, no, once, never, yes, only one, no, no, no, and so on and so forth until she reached the last few. There her tone grew more emphatic, as though those questions were what was important and everything prior had been a waste of time for both of them.

"Have you experienced any recent changes in appetite or pica?" Just like last week she then went on to elaborate, following the script the same as she always did, "Pica means nonfood cravings, things like eating paper or chewing ice. And just so you know, if you decide to give a witty answer I will record it and recommend you receive either iron supplements or sensitivity training. I' not in a good mood after the chewing out I received for my 'sloppy record keeping'. Depending on how this goes I'm going to be in just as much trouble as the intern in the labs who managed to…"

The last bit was a departure from the script, not that he could blame her.

"That bad?" he winced, able to guess what some of the answers given likely were.

"Since I'm not naming names I'm not violating confidentiality," she said, "I'm tied for third place in our little tally of 'number of times pussy or some variation thereof was given as an answer'. The winner doesn't have to pay for drinks when we go out after this is all over and I'm certainly going to need a drink after this."

"You and the rest of the medical staff swap stories about this stuff over drinks?" he'd never thought about that before, but it made sense.

"Of course," she laughed, "I'm sure you swap war stories as well."

"Yeah," he then, on a whim, he added, "You must have some pretty wild ones to tell then."

"No," her expression grew hard, "Mine are all singularly uninteresting and utterly typical. I had a very boring time of things before I decided to start working for the BSAA and since then everything's been just as boring, or at least it will be once we finish this and figure out what went wrong."

"Sure," he smiled, "So, about that question…"

His smile fell at the look she was giving him.

"No, nothing unusual," he said quickly.

They moved onto the questions about intrusive thoughts, impulse control issues, mood swings and similar nonsense. And it was nonsense because when the doctors first started asking those questions he'd been curious and asked why. The answer turned out to be that it was to help screen for individuals who might be infected with something, stupid since if someone was infected they would have died or turned well before they had a chance to go in for their physical.

With the questions over they moved onto the actual, physical part of the exam. She took his temperature, checked blood pressure, reflexes, listened to his heart and lungs. While she was shining a light into his eyes to check them, he asked the all-important question.

"Are we going to need to redo the blood test?"

"Yes."

She sounded furious.

More than that though, she sounded afraid.

How badly did you have to mess up paperwork to be in that much trouble? It was just a lost blood sample, right?

"Alright," she took a step back, shook herself like she was limbering up before preforming some difficult task, "Let's get you on the scale, weigh you, get your height, fix the problem and then we can…"

Yeah, the blood test. She didn't want to think about it either, because in the unlikely event that he fainted she'd probably need to call in help to get him back on his feet. Imposing as she could be, she was still a small woman.

She spent longer than strictly necessary fiddling with the scale, staring at it well after the numbers had come up.

"You _are_ putting on weight."

He flexed, "I've been working out a lot, you know."

She frowned, "And that would be relevant if I was measuring the circumference of your arms, but I'm not."

A joke, so maybe things weren't that bad. She'd just lost the paperwork, or written something down wrong and had gotten yelled at and told she needed to redo it all. The missing blood sample made it worse, but that wasn't her fault, she'd said as much, that an intern had misplaced it, but maybe they didn't know which intern so she was being held responsible. That felt like the right explanation.

She measured his height, looked down at her clipboard, shook her head, went over to the computer sitting on the desk, digital records were supposed to have made things easier, but clearly they hadn't, scrolled through something, walked back over to him, measured his height and frowned. Then she repeated the whole process, flipping through notes, scrolling through pages on the computer and growing more upset by the second.

"Alright, let's talk about your workout regimen then," she practically slammed the clipboard down on the table, "What the hell kind of steroids have you been using?"

The accusation was so outlandish that it took him several seconds to respond.

"I don't! Never would, that stuff can –"

"You're lying," Dr. Pintauro cut him off, "Either about the steroids or about something else and this exam isn't over until I find out which. I didn't mess up and the intern in the labs clearly didn't switch samples, so the situation is that you're two inches taller than you were six months ago and there are traces of an unknown strain of Progenitor derived virus, possessing more than a passing resemblance to the T-virus, in your blood. There's no arguing that at this point, so what we need to do is figure out how you were exposed."


	27. Cat's in the Cradle

**Summary:** At the last moment William Birkin tries to do the right thing, but it might be too little too late for that.

 **Characters:** William Birkin

 **Notes:** Cross posted from another site so if you think you've seen this before you probably have. Wrote it because I was inspired by a set of fics about Birkin prior to the events of the games. Also written because that song kept coming on the radio at work.

o0o

 _And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon  
Little boy blue and the man in the moon  
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when  
But we'll get together then  
You know we'll have a good time then."_

- _Cat's in the Cradle_ , Lyrics by Harry Chapin

He'd finished it, just in time or too little too late.

Annette had said that she would return to assist him, but it was too late for that. Too late for so many things. The G-virus was done, or as done as possible considering the circumstances. Further refinement would be necessary, but it was, again, too late. Perfect cellular regeneration, revitalization, it could do all that, but it was too unstable. Inject it into an organism and it would alter them, allow them to survive and recover from injuries that should have been fatal, but the virus took on a life of its own as a parasite and that parasitic stage was unstable, short lived and useless as a B.O.W.

Initially he'd thought to compare it to barnacles of the genus _Sacculina_ , but that wasn't entirely accurate. If the resultant G-virus organism resembled anything in its behavior it was similar to the gametophyte stage of certain algae and ferns, in that it was an intermediate form that existed for a singular purpose, reproduction. Again the comparison didn't hold true, but it worked to describe what was created.

Perhaps the reality lay somewhere between the two. A parasite that would overtake the host, allow the G-virus to mutate and adapt to it, and then…

Annette wasn't going to make it back in time. The bullets had perforated a lung. He could feel it growing increasingly difficult to breathe.

It was too late for him. Without proper medical attention he would die and with all the compounding variables there was no chance for it. If she got back in time Annette would be able to keep him alive that much longer, but her actions would only be prolonging the inevitable.

Unless one of those confounding variables, the men who had attacked him, stolen his life's work managed to find her. He was dead, there was no purpose in pretending otherwise, but Annette was alive and so was Sherry. If they found her that wouldn't be the case.

And then what would become of Sherry? He had neglected her so badly recently. They both had.

On the verge of a breakthrough he and Annette had ignored her. Later there would be time, that was what they had told themselves, when everything was done and they were so close to success. That was what he'd convinced Annette, later they could make up for everything. Later.

Later, later, later, there would always be time to be a better father later.

A better husband, because wasn't he the one who pulled Annette into his own work when she had projects of her own to worry about? They'd agreed there would be more time later.

Except there wasn't.

No time for him at least.

And if the mercenaries who had been hired to take the G-virus found her there wouldn't be time for Annette either.

Or Sherry.

When the duration of what constituted as later was measured in minutes some decisions were far too easy to make.

Injecting oneself with an unstable viral strain didn't seem like a terribly foolish idea when there was nothing left to lose.

Or everything left to lose, depending on how one looked at it.

If he survived long enough for the virus to take hold and begin the regeneration process he could find the men who had attacked him, deal with them so that Annette could escape and take Sherry to safety.

Annette would understand, and later, when Sherry was older she would understand as well. Because there would be a later for both of them.

It was too late for him. He was able to accept that on a rational, intellectual level, even as his dying body struggled against the inevitable. Death would come later, rather than sooner, still it would come. There it was again, later.

It was never too late to learn, especially unpleasant lessons.

He had believed that there was a limit to the amount of pain one could feel, that there existed a saturation point after which nothing new could be perceived.

And there might have been, but he discovered that he was mistaken in believing that being shot multiple times was sufficient to reach that threshold.

Injecting himself with the G-virus was a whole new level of agony, one that blotted out all reason, narrowing the world to a pinpoint of suffering and white light.

That was where he existed, a single instant of anguish on all levels.

Perhaps this was death, in which case it meant failure, utter failure.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise, the G-virus though perfect and complete, still required refining, but not of the sort that could take place in vitro.

The final stage, the period of mutation and adaptation had to take place in vivo. The virus would adapt to the host organism, and the host organism would adapt to suit the purpose of the virus at that stage.

The final strain, the one adapted to the host organism would destroy the primary host, rendering it little more than vessel for spreading, a catastrophic reproductive event looking for a suitable subject. If it found one, an organism possessing sufficient similarity on a genetic level, that organism would be infected and the true glory of the G-virus would be realized. In an instance of artificially created aggressive symbiosis, the adapted strain would join with the new host and, rather than overwhelming the host, the virus would improve it, creating a B.O.W. which, unlike those created by the unpredictable and necrotizing T-virus, would be capable of reproducing and breeding true. While the T-virus relied of a roll of the dice, rare and random genetic quirks for success, his G-virus could make a B.O.W. of anything.

Anything.

It was just necessary to have a set of potential hosts for the second stage that were genetically similar to the primary host. In theory related organisms would be best, siblings ideally, though he supposed that parents and offspring would be close enough to work.

He'd had a set of carefully line-bred rats ready and waiting for the final test, the one he'd never get the chance to run now. So much for proof of concept.

But someone had been betting on it being successful, even without the final test being run.

They'd been sure enough to kill him for it.

Except he wasn't dead yet, was he?

No, of course not. Death would be determined by a cession of thought, of pain, both of which continued with no trace of fading.

The pain most assuredly remained.

Except it was changing, slithering, moving, twitching, pulsing.

All from around the injection site rather than the gunshot wounds.

Pain on pain on pain it was hard to tell, but it no longer seemed to be coming from where he'd been shot.

And was the pinpoint of light expanding?

A keyhole that he could peer through and perceive shape and shadow? Movement?

Yes, there was movement.

Around him?

Had Annette returned? Could he find the words to tell her what he'd done, what she needed to do?

No, not around him.

Well, technically not around him.

Somehow, against all logic, he was standing. Swaying, unsteady on his feet, but standing.

From pinhole to keyhole to porthole he could see.

The world was blurry and gray and missing chunks, but he could see.

And walk, slow and unsteady, leaning against a desk, a chair, the wall until he was in the hall.

The G-virus was doing its work. It meant he only had a small amount of time to act before it overwhelmed him. He had to find the men who had attacked him before they found Annette.

Before Annette found him.

What the G-virus created was sure to be aggressive and he wasn't sure if it was him that was in control.

He could hear them not too far down the hall, turned around in the labyrinthine halls of the facility. When he was younger, had first started working for Umbrella there had been countless times he'd gotten lost, had to call Albert for help on the PA system. It had been a joke between the two of them that it would cut down on wasted time if one of them were to be fitted with a tracking device so that the other would always be able to find them.

An old joke.

Albert was dead now.

Had vanished during the mansion incident, killed by an unlucky roll of the dice.

The virus he'd made for Albert clearly hadn't worked, otherwise he would have contacted him by now with the good news. An eighty percent chance of success just hadn't been enough for Albert.

It went to show, there was no such thing as a safe bet.

Just like the way parents counted on seeing their children growing up, that later on time would give them the chance to catch up on all the time they'd already missed.

Like mercenaries and murderers counted on the men they'd left for dead to stay dead.

They panicked.

Bullets tore into him and he once again reassessed his hypothesis of pain thresholds.

The bullets hurt, but not like the first time.

Was it because what the virus was doing to him hurt more or because the virus was discarding unnecessary nerves?

Pain wouldn't help it in its goal of procreation and in that it benefitted him as well. Pain would gotten in his way. His goal was to keep Annette safe so that she could take Sherry away to safety.

Sherry.

Someday she'd understand.

He was doing it for her.

Annette would explain to her and he hoped that Sherry would understand that he'd meant to be a better father.

He'd done what he could, but it hadn't been enough. He realized that now. There was so much more he could have done.

So many days he could have taken off from work, so many long hours he could have cut short to be there with her. At least one more Christmas where he could have found a reason not to take his work home, let reading over notes distract him from what was going on around him.

Birthdays he hadn't needed to miss.

Sherry had been growing up without him and would continue to do so.

Thwarted ambitions of being a better father, a better husband.

And on the subject of such thwarted ambitions, the virus recognized them as well.

Watching his own actions from a distance he tore into his murderers, watching as the virus struggled to accomplish what it was not yet capable of. The mutations he was undergoing had not yet progressed far enough. It was not yet out of the adaptive stage, on the verge of the reproductive stage, but lacking the means.

Not that it would do any good. The men were too dissimilar to be anything other than failures. If the virus had possessed the means it would only be partial, creating more primary stage G-organisms. That was the beauty of the G-virus, it would find a way. The newly infected organisms would also seek out suitable hosts, a built-in failsafe

The plan had been to use dogs to create the final version because, in theory, the second stage G-organisms would reflect the temperament of the organism used to create them. Beagles for the first test, cheap, easy to get, common lab animals. His plan had been to purchase them as sets of siblings. Infect one pup in each litter and let it infect its siblings. They would become proper, useable organisms and would likely breed true with nonrelated secondary stage G-organisms of the same original host species.

That was how it was supposed to work, but he'd never gotten to that stage of testing, never would.

Albert had taught him the notion of misappropriation of laboratory resources, a lesson he'd planned to make use of with the beagles.

Tell Sherry that he was going to get her a pet, a kitten.

And then bring home the beagle.

Another little joke. Annette insisted that Sherry not know what the two of them did. After watching that one movie Sherry had asked him if he did that sort of thing, making animals into different animals.

So it became a joke that he and Annette worked to make cats into dogs, a safe sanitary way of skirting the truth.

He'd never get to see Annette or Sherry again, but that was probably for the best.

While killing the mercenaries he'd gotten a look at his hands.

The G-virus was unstable, its goal reproduction.

It didn't care about what it did to the host in the process.

He hadn't expected it to be that bad.

It made the T-virus look positively elegant.

The pain was throbbing, pounding, bursting.

And then relief of all things.

The pain lingered, but it had once again changed.

The more things changed the more they stayed the same.

He was lost, something he hadn't been in years, the only difference was that he couldn't call Albert for help.

Why would he even care to find a way out though? It wasn't as though anything could be done for him now. The G-virus would continue to mutate, subsume him until there was nothing left and then slowly destabilize until it reached a state that was incompatible with life.

So even if the mercenaries had gotten away he would have had the last laugh.

Whoever had hired them wouldn't know about that aspect of the G-virus, that the initial host didn't last indefinitely and that it wasn't supposed to. He hadn't told anyone about the secondary stage, hadn't wanted to for fear that his research would be taken from him.

Those fears had been justified.

So he'd been right. He would be dead soon, but he was right and there was some consolation to be found in that.

He'd protected Annette.

He'd protected Sherry.

Now he could die.

Eventually.

Without ever seeing either of them again.

They'd understand.

Annette would return, find him missing, see the discarded syringe and extrapolate from there.

She would return home, take Sherry to safety and eventually, when she was older, would explain, if not what had happened to him, why he'd done what he'd done.

To save her.

To be a good father at the last possible moment.

Sherry wouldn't know any of the suffering, the horror of his last moments, just that he'd done everything he could for her. It wouldn't be enough to make up for everything he'd missed, but it was something.

Safe at home, all alone, waiting for him, Sherry would never know.

Alone.

He had stayed late at work, kept Annette with him.

He wasn't supposed to be in the labs at this hour.

Since Albert's death he'd been keeping increasingly strange hours, getting progressively more difficult to find in his rush to finish his work before it was too late.

Albert's death had been like the start of an unseen timer, counting down to an end, one that he'd finally reached.

They'd been lucky to find him at the lab.

Or had they?

Was there such a thing as luck?

Not for Albert and certainly not for him.

Why would it be any different for the men that had been sent to steal his work, to kill him?

They would certainly hedge their bets.

If they hadn't found him at work they would have come for him at home, tie up loose ends.

Tie up loose ends.

Why assume that there was only one group of them?

If the goal was to kill him, which it likely was, making the G-virus more valuable by ensuring that the samples they had were the only extant specimens they might not have expected to find him in the labs. The ones that had found him had certainly been caught off guard. Twice.

Without _his_ knowledge of the final stages of the project the samples were useless, but that had been _him_ protecting _his_ work. _They_ didn't know that.

They also had no way of knowing where to find him.

They could have come for him at home, where he would have had no way of stopping them, of protecting Sherry.

They would have killed them all.

They might still come to his home.

When the team that had gone after him in the labs didn't report back they might look for him elsewhere.

They might already be looking for him.

They might be at his home.

Sherry.

He might have still failed to protect her.

No!

There might still be time.

He had to make it home to her.

To protect her.

Because he'd already failed so badly at that.

The virus was spreading, growing, taking over more and more of him, but it was taking the pain with it.

As there was less and less of him there was less and less that could feel.

But he could still think.

Of Sherry.

He had to find her.

There was a sense of desperation to that thought.

A last chance for him to do the right thing.

Soon there would be nothing left of him, he was sure of that. What time he had, borrowed at this point, was already running out.

He'd done his best.

Not enough.

Never enough.

He could have done so much more.

For Sherry.

Had to keep her safe.

Find her.

Sherry.

The resultant organism would seek out a suitable host for the adapted strain.

The initial host would reach a state incompatible with like and die.

He would die.

He was dying.

Movement.

Find it.

Keep them from finding Annette.

From getting to Sherry.

Had to find her first.

Make sure she was safe.

Sherry.

That was what mattered.

All that mattered.

Sherry.


	28. Zombie Movies

**Summary:** A really long setup for a really, really bad joke with Khoroushi, Rostam and the rest of my OC squad.

 **Characters:** Assorted original characters.

 **Notes:** I think I've written pretty much this same fic in slightly different situation with a different set of characters in another setting, I don't know if I've posted it though.

o0o

"Did you know that George Romero didn't invent the zombie horror genre?"

Burke smiled widely as he asked the question out of nowhere.

Khoroushi was doing his best to ignore Burke. It was easier than trying to discipline him for every stupid thing he said. He just hoped that the rest of the squad would do the same. Just in case he shot a pointed glance at Abrahams, silently willing him not to rise to the bait.

Abrahams met his gaze, or at least Khoroushi thought he did. Abrahams was wearing his gasmask again and even when you could see his face he didn't have the most readable range of expressions. Rostam was better at conveying emotion and that was saying something. Truth be told, Khoroushi was kind of glad Abrahams wore the mask so often. When a guy's default expression was a thousand yard stare it got unnerving.

And speaking of unnerving, Fisher had just said something to make Scavoni laugh. That wasn't bad in and of itself, but it still felt ominous.

Khoroushi wasn't as strong a believer in Murphy's Laws as some of his fellow soldiers, but there was no sense in tempting fate. It was supposed to be a routine patrol in an area confirmed to be zombie free, but that didn't really mean anything. It wasn't like zombies showed up on thermal, the only way to be sure there weren't any zombies in a place was to raze it to the ground and that wasn't an option.

So they were patrolling the nominally zombie free streets of small village in Eastern Europe. They'd already encountered two of the zombies that weren't supposed to be there, a pair of dogs eating a third genuinely dead dog. Because apparently dogs didn't count. Because even with zombies there had to be baffling rules of engagement.

Khoroushi let out a silent sigh of relief when Burke's smile faltered. He was going to let it drop, for the second time since Khoroushi had known him Burke wasn't going to keep pushing. Maybe things weren't going to go wrong, maybe they'd finish the patrol without incident, get back and get the chance to relax for a bit.

His feeling of relief was short lived, Rostam reached out to tap Burke on the shoulder, one eyebrow raised in a questioning expression.

On the bright side of things it showed that the Tyrant had taken the order not to growl to get someone's attention to heart, finally. Of course it had to be to get Burke to continue, the two of them brought out the worst in each other.

No, that wasn't true and to think that was tempting Murphy. Rostam encouraged Burke to be at his worst and then played along. Rostam at his worst would probably result in the swift and messy deaths of the rest of the squad. Fortunately Rostam had more control than Burke.

"You didn't know?" Burke looked up and smiled while Khoroushi braced himself for what was likely to be a long, one-sided discussion about old monster movies. Why Burke liked monster movies so much was beyond him. As far as Khoroushi was concerned he dealt with the sorts of things that happened in those movies often enough in real life that his idea of fun was anything that made him forget that stuff was real.

Rostam shook his head. Of course the Tyrant didn't know, Khoroushi thought bitterly, until now he probably didn't even know that zombie movies were even a thing. The only zombie movie he'd ever seen was likely an instructional video on how to tell them apart from people so he knew what to kill. That was what made him the perfect foil for Burke, the fact that just about anything that you could think of would be news to him meant that he was perfect for bouncing stupid questions off of.

"Technically there was a series made back in '62 about people living in a post outbreak world."

"Bullshit," Abrahams interjected, catching just about everyone off guard, "Romero was the first. I'm a big fan of his stuff. Seeing those movies as a kid was part of what got me into this."

"You probably didn't watch it because it was a really old science fiction cartoon, way before your time," Burke was oblivious to the irony of his statement considering that he was the youngest member of the squad. He continued, happy to be the center of attention, as he so often was, "It doesn't even mention the zombies, but that's fine because the Romero movies don't use the word 'zombie' either, so you can't count that against it. That means the real inventor of the zombie genre was Hanna Barbera with the Jetsons."

Khoroushi had never heard of the show so he wasn't sure if Burke was making things up or not. Fortunately Fisher spoke up.

"The Jetsons? As in the old animated sitcom?"

"So you know about it?" Burke smiled.

Rostam looked back and forth as though considering which side to take in the argument that was about to happen. He and Abrahams didn't get along very well, but he might go with him to give Burke a hard time, or he might side with Fisher for the same reasons, otherwise he'd go with Burke and the squad might never hear the end of whatever it was that Burke was going on about.

"Of course I know about it!" Fisher snapped, "When I was little my grandma would always buy DVDs at the dollar store for me to watch when we visited. I probably saw more old cartoons and knockoff garbage than anyone who actually grew up with that stuff."

"Then you'll remember how they all lived on giant elevated platforms. You never got to see what was down on earth," Burke countered with a smug smile, "Zombies."

Rostam chose his side. Rolling his eyes the Tyrant gave Burke a good, hard shove. Not enough to hurt him, but enough for him to be sent stumbling. Apparently there were some jokes that were so bad that even Rostam didn't have patience for them.

"Alright, knock it off," Khoroushi said, having decided that things had gone on for long enough, "Let's keep focused. It'll be getting dark soon and I'd like to get back to base before then."


	29. Counting Cats in Zanzibar

**Notes:** You might have noticed that this header is out of its normal order. That's because the summary ended up turning into the introduction to the story. Written after several talks about writing something from the PoV of a B.O.W., the idea somehow shifted into the notion of nature documentary observations on B.O.W.s. This came as a result. The title is about futility, then the end just sort of happened.

 **Characters:** None?

 **Summary:** After the incident in Kijuju where Wesker was stopped from releasing Uroboros and wiping out humanity is was decided that the cost of cleaning up the city, villages, TriCell compound and the surrounding areas would be too costly in terms of manpower and funding, two resources that the West African Branch of the BSAA was severely lacking. Instead a quarantine zone was created and maintained where nature was allowed to run its course. Over the years researchers from across the world were allowed to enter the zone to conduct observations of what was happening in the quarantine zone, all under the careful eye of local BSAA operatives. The BSAA in time came to regard it as a valuable resource, a look into an infected ecosystem and the dangers such an area might pose in the long term. Operatives from other branches were occasionally sent in to the area, a way to let men and women see B.O.W.s for the first time.

Surprisingly, the dangers posed by the zone turned out to be relatively few. The Majini, plaga infected locals, with no apparent leader remaining, quickly died out within the first year, unable to maintain the degree of organization necessary to survive once immediate food supplies ran out.

Uroboros infected organisms lasted slightly longer, though the largest quickly starved or killed each other off in near constant fights. Their sensitivity to light and heat meant that they were ill-suited for survival

Smaller infected creatures survived for longer, but as they were unable to reproduce their numbers dwindled down to the point where sightings by researchers have become rare.

The most commonly sighted and best known B.O.W.s are the remains of TriCell's licker colony, unique in their ability to successfully mate and carry offspring to term. They are some of the most thoroughly researched B.O.W.s in the quarantine zone, several individuals having been fitted with tracking collars to better monitor the activities of the group.

To date, despite the females being highly fertile, not a single juvenile has survived.

o0o

The licker darted in and out of the slowly collapsing ruin, searching for prey only to run back out to listen.

It was a fearful time for her. Hissing, she shook her head, the movement causing her to feel the weight of the collar around her neck. When she had woken up and felt it for the first time she'd tried for days to get it off, her claws causing no small amount of damage to her neck and shoulders in the process. Now she was used to it and shaking to feel its weight had become a habit that she couldn't break. There was something reassuring about the constant presence. The collar also made it harder for the male to bite her neck and hold her still, though there were times when she allowed it. It wasn't so bad since he often bit the collar instead.

This was not one of those times. He'd been driven from the area by the remaining females again, but he'd be back if he wasn't already, prowling along the outskirts of the ruins and looking to steal food or catch one of them alone. None of them were ready to be caught right now, but that hadn't stopped him in the past. He was always ready to catch one of them.

Leaving the building once again to stand in the heat of the day she listened with such intensity that she shook and the shapes of the world went blurry.

There was silence where she'd expected sound.

The fear, which had been constant, grew.

Clicking her teeth she let out a loud squeal.

A feeble cry answered her and she squealed again, her own cry bouncing off the pile of rubble that concealed the source of the noise.

Her little one.

The cry was softer than it had been just that morning. Nothing like the squawking and screaming that there had been in the beginning. Soon there wouldn't be any answer at all. One way or another that was how it always went.

The crying would be constant for a time, tapering off to the occasional frantic squawk. Then it would only be in response to her own cries and at the very end, right before the final silence, there would only be noise when she nudged the little one.

She squealed again.

The cry was louder this time and she relaxed slightly.

Another female answered.

She let out a bubbling growl in the direction it had come from to warn them away.

Chest and stomach and head aching she ran back into the cool of the ruins to see if she could find food. Prey in the ruins was poor prey, but it was easy.

Little squirming things that writhed and struggled even as they were eaten had been abundant at one point, back when the world had expanded from uniform solid walls to something too large to take in at once and too irregular to properly comprehend. The larger world had been intoxicating at first, so many things to explore, smell, chase and eat. It had been a paradise to her stimulation starved senses and she and the others had even been willing to tolerate the males. There had been more of them then, males and females and the males had been far more tolerable.

She and another female had favored the smallest male, often fighting each other for his attention. He never bit or clawed, grabbing an arm or leg with his tongue and pulling her over when he wanted to take her. She'd always let him because she'd liked the attention from him.

He was killed early on in a fight with a larger male, but not so soon that his efforts were futile.

That little one, the first that she'd had the chance to keep had been eaten by one of the males, the scent of blood drawing them in. She'd fought them off, but not before the little one was so many scraps scattered on the ground.

The next little one, which could have been from any of the three males left, their attentions had been constant, enough to kill one of the females, had gone quiet when she left to go hunting, another curious female having crushed it to death. They were all curious about the little ones, harrying each other almost as bad as the males when they could sense and smell the time drawing near. Little ones were frequently stolen, fought over and killed by accident. She'd killed more than one herself, thrilled by the newness of it and the way it sniffed and nudged, grasped and nipped.

The nipping was important, she'd figured that out by the fourth little one. They had no teeth so it didn't hurt and it helped with the ache in her chest. The problem was that there was never enough. They would cry for want of more and eventually she would need to leave to hunt.

This time there had been two little ones and she'd known enough to prepare. She and the others had driven the last male, the one that had killed all the others, away more fiercely than they had in the past. She'd hunted desperately, going after prey she normally would have avoided, the others joining in with her whenever she injured a large hard thing or a large soft thing. The soft things were better, but they were wary, running away to hide rather than towards to attack. There were fewer and fewer of the hard things all the time, leaving them to struggle with soft prey, too fast and nimble and afraid to be caught.

Towards the end she'd even tried to hide the remains of prey so that she could continue to eat when her belly got in her way and she would have to wait.

And when the time had finally come she had done everything that she'd learned, eaten the remains, chewed away that which had tied the little ones to her – not too short because then the little ones would bleed to death, hidden them away from the other females and let them nip at her until their cries grew frustrated.

There had been two of them this time, something that had never happened to her or the others.

She'd hunted normally at first, only to come back and witness the male pounce on one, crushing it and then swat the other with his claws.

She'd attacked with a fury that she'd forgotten herself capable of and driven the male away. He'd left with the one he'd killed, prey to be eaten in safety.

The remaining little one was crying and bleeding from its leg, but eventually the bleeding stopped. It didn't move as well afterwards, distressing, but at the same time a relief. It couldn't stray too far from where she hid it, meaning that it was in less danger from the male or other females.

A faint rustle caught her attention, movement and a bitter smell. Her tongue darted out into the crevice in the wall and the thing wrapped around it with countless boneless limbs.

She ate it quickly, while it was still fighting.

Once she had brought prey back for a little one, but the prey had still been fighting and killed the little one. Next time, with the next little one she'd tried killing it, but without teeth the little one couldn't eat.

No longer hungry, but far from full she hurried back to the little one. It nipped her several times then butted its head against her. There wasn't enough for it.

There was never enough.

It lay down next to her and cried.

She lay down and gurgled back at it, nudging it, memorizing its smell and feel just in case there was something she'd forgotten about it.

Take in all the sounds and scent, every nuance because soon it would be silent and gone.

Another female approached her, crawling low, belly against the ground.

She allowed her to approach, to carefully sniff the little one until it let out a hiss.

Standing up she growled at the other female and she backed away.

The other female would have a little one of her own soon so she was less of a threat, but she was still a threat.

She lay down several feed away and squealed softly, examining the little one from that distance.

There was a silent understanding between the two of them, that this time would be no different from any previous time for either of them, but the hope remained.

Their numbers dwindled with each passing season, creating a sense of urgency that colored their days.

Hunting was a desperate effort for survival, exploring, like back at the start, was a waste of valuable energy. They regarded each other warily, yet craved constant companionship. Fights were frequent and intense.

It was only a matter of time.

The little one started crying, frantic, reedy squeaks.

Growling, she charged the other female, driving her away even though they'd been constant companions when the world first expanded, then went to hunt again.

She'd caught scent of unusual prey recently, as happened every so often, but this prey, the best of prey was careful. She'd smelt them before, could still remember the first time and how something had clicked in her mind that what she smelled was a thing to attack. It was there with the other prey, but not as strongly. Other prey hadn't hurt her, didn't smell like memories of fear and things that she couldn't understand, things that would wake her up at night shaking with frustration and mindless rage.

She'd never actually managed to bring down any of that particular prey, but she longed to.

It kept its distance, never coming near enough to attack, though there were times when its smell was there and strong, like when she had woken up with the collar. The scent of prey had been on her, on the others who had also ended up with collars. She was the last one left of those that had been collared.

There were so few left. Her, the last male, the female she tolerated any time she didn't have a little one, the smallest female who never had little ones of her own but would steal them if she got the chance, the larger female who would start group hunts and drive the male away, the pair that always kept together, and other females too, indistinct in her mind for lack of distinguishing characteristics.

Her searching startled something small from its hiding place and she flicked her tongue at it, killing it instantly and swallowing it in three quick bites.

Hurrying back out into the open she squealed and waited for the little one to cry.

Whimpering and then a single soft cry.

Soon there would be silence.

Panting and growling, she hurried to where she kept her little one and lay down next to it nuzzling it and letting it nip at her until it gave up and resumed crying.

No amount of nudging and carefully touching could make it stop crying. This was the longest one of her little ones had lasted, but it wasn't growing any stronger. Like all the others, it was growing weaker with each passing day. She could smell the desperation and hunger. There was still time before it would fall silent, but not much.

Perhaps she could get the others to help her hunt something large, something that might feed them for more than a day.

But doing that would mean leaving the little one alone with no one to drive the male away. He wouldn't follow them to hunt, waiting to attack them and fight for the kill. He would come and kill the little one while they were away, just like how some of the other females, the ones who were dead from fighting, would do with their own little ones when they had them.

Shaking her head she felt the collar, its weight grounding her.

Thinking was hard as it often was. No choices there for her to make felt right.

Nothing ever felt right.

Hunting could wait, she was thirsty, which was even worse. The water that was safe to drink was far from where she kept the little one, too far to go more than once a day. That was part of the reason she'd hidden the little one where she had, it was a place where the others wouldn't go as often.

Except the cries of the little one, so much like prey, drew them in.

She waited for as long as she could until the thirst was too much, leaving her hiding spot she rushed to where the water was.

Running in the heat of the day was a mistake, leaving her hot and exhausted, enough so that when she lowered her head to drink the world spun and she fell. Laying in the water she drank and waited to feel better. She'd have to walk back.

After all this time she still made mistakes, still acted in ways that would do her harm. Lessons were hard learned and always painful, coming too late to do much good.

Several sharp cracks split the air, jagged lines across her awareness. They were sounds she'd heard before, ones she associated with death even though she'd never learned the source.

They'd happened when the world opened for her and the others, when there had been death and prey everywhere.

Rising to her feet she squealed and listened to the echoes to gain her bearings, then carefully walked back.

The wind shifted, bringing with it the scent of blood and prey. That was good, except the blood wasn't prey. Too much to be her little one, but it was from her kind.

Squealing constantly she picked up her pace.

Two of the other females were approaching, she recognized them by noises they made and the way they stood as a pair that were always together. They hunted together, the quickest to join the large female hunting, they ate best for it. Perhaps she could join them to hunt larger prey, or the good prey that she could smell everywhere.

One of the pair approached her and she growled, not loudly, just enough to warn.

The female snorted and crouched down to make herself smaller. Her companion moved next to her and did the same.

It was something they had done before and she knew that they would stay where they were unless she got close, then they'd both attack. It was how they'd survived despite being less aggressive than most, which was why she didn't make more of an effort to drive them away. They weren't likely to attack her or the little one.

Squealing and clicking her teeth she approached where her little one was. The smell of prey and silence was heavy.

An object was out of place, something large and soft was several feet away from the hiding spot. She could smell the male.

Crouching low she inched forward.

It wasn't until she was right on top of the object that she realized that it was the male, dead and covered in blood.

Growling she sniffed at his mouth and claws. The only blood was his.

Another object lay several feet away.

The largest female, also dead and covered in her own blood.

Turning back to the pair of females she growled and they growled back at her, nervous sounds.

They didn't know either.

The scent of prey was strongest around where she hid her little one, overpowering and making her want to cry out.

She did.

The little one didn't answer.

She could smell it, but there was no trail for her to follow, just the scent of prey.

Squealing and grunting, she followed the scent of prey, circling back to the hiding spot and then tracking the prey again.

The scent didn't stop exactly, just grew faint in an area full of a dry, bitter, burnt smell.

Retracing the trail back to where the male and female were dead she found several sharp smelling objects, metallic and dusty, but no trace of the little one. She'd smelt those things before, had no understanding of what they were, but they meant something and frightened her for it.

Skittering back to where the remains of the male and large female were she noted that the pair of females had started eating, tearing into the dead male with great enthusiasm.

They knew it was an end then, as surely as she did. With the male gone there would be no more little ones.

She sniffed around the hiding spot one last time, let out a long squeal and waited.

The female that had been her closest companion at the start of it all answered from not too far away and she allowed her to approach. Together they sat huffing and wheezing, sniffing the air and wondering.

Would the prey come back?

If it was soon would the group of them be able to kill it?

Where was the little one?

With the male gone it would be the last for her.

Her companion growled softly. She was getting heavy, it would be her time soon.

Worry and fear were a constant, but this time it was more so.

Fewer and fewer all the time.

Soon there would be none of them left.

That thought settled heavily in her mind.

None of them left.

One last squeal and she went over to the dead female and began to eat.

She hadn't hunted well and food was food.

o0o

The researchers were all in a state of shock. After all the months of constant reminders from the BSAA operatives keeping a watchful eye on them what had happened was unthinkable.

The birth of a pair of licker pups had caused quite the stir, twins were previously unheard of. The dominant male killing one of the pair hadn't been a surprise, he'd killed pups before, but the survivor had lasted longer than any of the others, which wasn't saying much. The majority of them didn't make it past their first few days and the survivor wasn't in very good shape, injured and slowly starving thanks to the shape of the pup's muzzle making nursing difficult, not to mention the majority of the females not lactating. This particular female was an exception, but previous pups had still starved.

The pup had been quite active at first, before its injury and gradual weakening, providing endless interesting observations right up until the incident.

One of the BSAA operatives, a member of a squad that had been brought in from Europe, the trip to the quarantine zone serving as part of a training exercise, had grown increasingly frustrated watching the lickers through binoculars and cameras. He didn't like watching B.O.W.s rather than killing them, but the pup was a special source of contention. Towards the end he had demanded that he be given permission to go and put the thing out of its misery, but the request was denied, not by his commanding officer, but the head researcher. Nature was to be let run its course. That was the point of the observations being done in the quarantine zone. Besides, it seemed unlikely that the licker population would ever establish itself as a threat.

That hadn't sat well with the young man and finally he and another operative took matters into their own hands, taking a jeep belonging to the research team and driving it to where the licker colony was. In the minutes that followed two of the lickers were shot, a pair that would later be recognized as the dominant male and female and the pair of operatives returned triumphant, the man who had started it all holding the pup immobile in a blanket.

The pup itself was surprisingly alert and docile, having just finished a meal of boxed chocolate milk, the only thing that had been available to feed it.


	30. The Name Game

**Summary:** The story of how Rostam, the BSAA Tyrant, got his name.

 **Characters:** Assorted original characters.

 **Notes:** Writing about these guys is fun for me, a neat way to explore what a world with B.O.W.s could end up being like. Taking a look back at the squad not long after they first ended up with a Tyrant felt like a nice bit of fun.

o0o

"How about Ymir?"

Khoroushi didn't even need to ask to know what Burke was talking about.

"It sounds like a girl's name," Abrahams said before the suggestion could actually be discussed, catching the others off guard. It was the first time he'd had any input on the subject and in an even more surprising turn of events he continued, "If we've got to name the thing we should at least give it a normal name."

"Him," Fisher corrected reflexively.

Khoroushi quickly glanced at the subject of discussion, but the Tyrant either wasn't paying attention or didn't care. It was hard to tell since the thing's default expression seemed to be pissed off. Khoroushi hadn't been happy when his squad had been selected for specialized training and had been even less happy when, at the end of it, they'd been chosen to receive a Tyrant. The BSAA had been using them for two years at that point, so it wasn't like it was something too new or experimental, but it was still a B.O.W. Khoroushi hadn't joined the BSAA with the intention of working alongside a B.O.W. and he knew that there were a lot of guys who felt the same way. You worked with what you were given though, and part of what he and his squad had been given was a Tyrant.

"Normal…" Burk stopped to think, brow furrowing in effort.

It wasn't surprising that normal took Burke effort. After nearly a year of working with him Khoroushi had realized that there was something off about Burke and the squad getting assigned a Tyrant only made it more obvious. Burke had taken things well, maybe too well, showing far more enthusiasm than necessary.

"Paul?" he offered at last.

"Tall Paul," Scavoni said without pause.

The Tyrant shrugged, utterly indifferent to the fact that it was still unnamed. It had been with the squad for nearly a month, long enough that they'd been redeployed and the fact that it was still 'the Tyrant' or 'big guy' when being directly addressed was a cause for concern. Nowhere was it written down that Tyrants had to have names, but every squad that got assigned a Tyrant ended up giving it a name or at least a nickname. Supposedly it made it easier to work with them, though Khoroushi doubted that a name would be enough to help him or his men, with the notable exception of Burke, get over the fact that they were working with something roughly eight feet tall, strong enough to pick up and throw a car, and had the potential to go berserk and kill them all without warning. It had a kill switch, explosive charges set on the inside of the armor plate that had been grafted over its exposed, secondary heart. If something went wrong Khoroushi just had to press a button on the remote control he carried with him at all times and that would be the end of the Tyrant. It was something he sincerely hoped that he never had to do.

Paul or even 'Tall Paul' seemed to be a nonstarter and the suggestions continued. It had been going on since they first been introduced to Tyrant B3-9. Fisher had been the first to throw out an idea with the suggestion of Goliath. It had been rejected after Scavoni confirmed that, yes, that was the big guy who got killed when a little kid hit him in the head with a rock. Scavoni then suggested Chronos, who was apparently king of the giants or something. The name was rejected on the grounds that it made Burke snicker. Samson was shot down by the Tyrant itself on account of it being 'a dog name' and Scavoni had backed it on that, adding that it was a terrible name on account of the Tyrant being bald, whatever that was supposed to mean. Khoroushi had decided that he didn't want an explanation for that, especially when Burke followed up by suggesting Xerxes, because the Tyrant 'looked kind of like him' in 'that one movie''. Once Khoroushi realized that Burke was talking about Khashayar the First he'd been honestly surprised and not just because Burke knew who the famous king was. He genuinely had no idea how Burke had come to the conclusion that the totally bald, square-jawed Tyrant in any way resembled what the ancient king must have looked like. Then Burke went on to elaborate what 'that one movie' was. In the minutes that followed Burke managed to prove the Tyrant's intelligence by taking longer than it did to catch on to what the problem was. The next name suggested, Hercules, was rejected for obvious reasons.

"How about John if we're going with normal?" Fisher offered.

The Tyrant stared at him, its typical look of displeasure deepening into a grimace.

Instead of dropping it Fisher decided to press the issue, "What's wrong with John?"

The Tyrant flipped him the bird.

"I've got it!" Burke suddenly broke into a smile.

The whole squad stopped to stare at him. Anything that had Burke that enthusiastic was typically a bad thing. Even the Tyrant was giving him a quizzical look.

"Alright, you said no monsters, but giants are okay because they're what everyone else is doing," Burke began.

Since Goliath had been rejected as an option they'd heard of two other Tyrants with that exact, stupid name. Given its history Khoroushi was amazed by how popular that particular name turned out to be. There'd also been a Typhon and a Jotunn, so Burke was right, giants were popular.

The Tyrant motioned for him to continue.

"In that case I've got the perfect…" Burke trailed, his enthusiasm vanishing as though someone had flipped a switch, "Never mind. Wow I feel stupid forgetting something like that. The way that'd get taken…"

"I don't even want to know," Abrahams cut him off.

Khoroushi had to admit that he was morbidly curious about what idea Burke might have had that was bad enough for him to reject it on his own, but not curious enough to actually ask. The Tyrant on the other hand didn't seem to have such compunctions.

It smiled, an expression somehow more frightening than when it looked angry, and again motioned for Burke to continue.

Burke grew thoughtful, looked like he was about to start talking again, then once again stopped himself, "No way. It was a really bad idea, really, really bad."

And he refused to elaborate beyond that, making it the first time that Burke actually been willing let something drop without needing to be yelled at or threatened.

"Do you have any ideas?" Khoroushi asked the Tyrant itself, already knowing what the answer would be since it was something he'd asked it countless times before.

"No," it shrugged, genuinely not seeming to care about not having a name. That was one of the things that Khoroushi found unnerving about it, the thing was smart, but what it considered important didn't make much sense.

A distress call came over the radio, effectively putting an end to the conversation. By the sounds of it another squad clearing some warehouses about a quarter mile away had come across an Ogroman and had assumed it was dead. The thing had been dormant and they'd somehow managed to wake it up and now they needed all the help they could get.

"Shit," the Tyrant shook its head.

"Yeah," Fisher agreed, "But there's not really anything we can do. We don't have anything heavy enough to take down an Ogroman."

The Tyrant gave him an exaggerated quizzical look and tapped a finger against its chest.

"You really think you can take on one of those things?" Khoroushi wondered if the Tyrant was as intelligent as it seemed or if he'd been mistaken.

It nodded and smiled

That was something to consider. They had a Tyrant and there were no specific procedures for using Tyrants yet, other than that they were to be used for dealing with B.O.W.s in an attempt to minimize risk to human soldiers.

"Alright," Khoroushi couldn't believe what he was doing, "We're going to assist as best as we can, at least until they can get guys in with what it takes to take down something like that."

"I can take it," the Tyrant stretched, limbering up in preparation for action.

"I'm sure it'll be like Rostam and the white elephant, you'll hit it once and crush in its skull," Khoroushi rolled his eyes and radioed in that his squad would be there as quickly as they could.

o0o

In the end it took considerably more than one hit, but the name stuck anyway.


	31. Vera Gemini

**Summary:** An alternate version of Ada's final encounter with Carla.

 **Characters:** Ada Wong, Carla Radames

 **Notes:** I realize that I haven't had any fun with Ada yet. This changes that. Title comes from an odd song that I'm rather fond of. I don't write song fics, but I often title drafts of stories after songs and this time it stuck because I couldn't think of a better title.

o0o

Ada had seen many strange things during all the years she'd spent playing both sides of the bio-research industry, but the doppelganger had to be one of the strangest. Since her first encounter with it and this final confrontation in China she'd done her research, knew as much as there was to know about it, the woman who had once been Carla Radames. It was a sad story, one of obsession and twisted passions, but one no more sad than any of the others that she had, in one way or another, played a part in.

Simmons was the one behind it all, his goals, his ambitions, his madness consuming all in his path, including the brilliant Carla Radames.

It was a shame, she was, or had been, a woman who Ada felt that she could have had some interesting conversations with. Weak-willed for falling into the trap that she had, one of her own building, but Ada still wished that she could have known the real Carla, the woman who had in the end struggled to break through Simmons' illusions and reassert herself.

It was a shame that she'd done it in such a rampantly destructively way. If, when she'd first reached out to Ada, she'd asked for help rather than putting on an elaborate show of contempt, Ada would have been more than willing to offer assistance. Cooperating with an insider in an organization like NeoUmbrella and Simmons' 'Family' was always bound to be profitable and the results could have been a long, fruitful partnership. As it was, Ada had no choice but to see Carla's destruction through to the end, to be sure that she wouldn't survive to give her more trouble in the future.

Though she often left behind messes, Ada hated loose ends that could come back to bite her and Carla certainly would have been one messy loose end. Still, she wasn't a monster and there was no harm in showing some sympathy for the mess that Carla had become and the woman she had once been before putting a bullet through her brain.

It was neater, cleaner to end it like that.

When she reached the crumpled body lying on the deck Ada was surprised to discover that Carla was still breathing. She'd known that there was the risk of Carla surviving thanks to the C-virus, but it still surprised her to see that the woman was alive. Considering that the final few months of her life had been a whirlwind of lashing out at Simmons and everything he'd built, tempered by no small amount of self-sabotage, it was impressive that her will to live was that great at this late a juncture in things. Ada had expected that she would have burnt herself out, that having denied herself the revenge she sought, Carla would have allowed herself to die and be free of it all.

That clearly wasn't the case.

Carla's determination was greater than she'd originally expected, admirable and pitiable in equal measure.

Ada spoke to her, said her part, more for her own benefit than for Carla. The woman was likely beyond hearing even if she was alive, and what she had to say was more about creating a complete story, giving a sense of closure to a story that had a real end, not as long as the viruses and B.O.W.s that had been created were still out there.

There was no real end to any of it.

But it was still nice to write the closing note to a long, sad chapter in it all, one where there were no heroes, no villains, only victims and those willing to take advantage of them.

Ada knew which she was and had no trouble accepting it. She'd come to terms with it all long ago, though there were times when...

Deception on top of deception, maybe she was even deceiving herself.

What she'd seen had certainly given her plenty to think about once this was all over.

Like how to salvage what she could.

Carla's legacy was one of murder and destruction and a great deal of debris for Ada to wade through to see what she could salvage.

When the body sat up Ada froze and then took half a step back. It wasn't anything that she hadn't seen before, though Carla's defiant rant caught her off guard. It was impressive that, after all she'd been through, the woman was able to hold herself together so well, except she wasn't. Ada soon realized that Carla looked like she was melting, thin slime dripping off her. It wasn't like the thick resin that flowed from J'avo as they transformed into chrysalids, this was something different.

Even as Carla ranted on, Ada couldn't help wondering what sort of transformation was taking place. Were the layers of deception dripping away, proving Carla's final rant a lie as her true form was revealed? That would be fitting, poetic, that she would at least die as herself, even if she wasn't herself enough to understand it.

That was what made Ada linger, stay too close for too long and when Carla reared back and literally spat one last bitter outburst she took it full on. The slime hit her in the face as Carla continued her rant, all the while further deteriorating, her body reflecting her mind.

It was again poetic, though not nearly as clean as Ada liked things to be.

Still, she could accept that it was a fitting end.

Carla would rule nothing, for that was what she was in the end, so much nothing, a puddle of ooze laying on the deck of a slowly sinking boat.

Maybe not a clean end, but an end none the less.

Ada turned to leave only to freeze at the sound of mad laughter.

Twice in as many minutes.

Carla certainly was full of surprises.

She turned around, expecting to see some monster rising up from the mess of slime, but there was nothing, just bubbles and a slowly spreading pool of whitish liquid.

Laughter rose with the bubbles.

Carla had certainly given her an interesting final dilemma.

How to kill something with no discernible anatomy?

"I'm the real Ada Wong."

Carla's voice hissed from the puddle, which surged forward, covering the deck and sweeping over Ada's feet, ropes of spongy matter wrapping around her legs. They tore away easily when she took step, the soft, rotten looking tendrils having no real strength. So the thing wouldn't be able to kill her, but the question of how to kill it remained.

She could always leave it for the BSAA, but what Simmons had done made this one feel personal. She wanted this one to be hers and hers alone.

A few lingering droplets of slime dripped down her face and she wiped them away, thin strands clinging to her glove.

Something wasn't right.

"When I kill you I'll be the only one!" Carla hissed joyfully.

"It's not going to be that easy," Ada sighed, wishing that Carla was less determined, less fascinating.

This time the appendages that rose up from the slime were almost arms, ending in slender, boneless fingers that melted away to nothing the moment they touched her.

"You can hardly hold yourself together."

Carla's response was a laugh, the slime rising up in a small wave one that was nearly knee high and swept harmlessly past her legs. There was no force behind the blow, no strength left.

Ada blinked, slime clinging to her eyelashes.

It was foul, but that wasn't important, what mattered was that it hadn't been there before.

The ooze that had been Carla was everywhere now, spreading, flowing across the deck of the boat and down inside, making the boat move sluggishly in the water.

Ada looked down at herself, her clothing glistened with the stuff, as did every inch of exposed skin, skin that had taken on a pale, almost translucent appearance.

"No," Ada looked from herself to Carla.

"Yes," came a triumphant hiss.

Lingering for as long as she had was a mistake. She was leaving. Now.

It might already have been too late though…

No, she couldn't think that way.

This time when the slime grabbed at her it was with actual hands, dozens of them that gripped her legs, pulled at her clothing, grabbed at her feet every time she took a step until they finally managed to trip her.

"No!" More forceful this time, more determined. For the first time in a very long time Ada was genuinely afraid for her life.

"Yes!" An actual face rose up from the slime to say this, Carla's face, her own, smiling triumphantly up at her.

She struck it and it splashed to nothing, spraying her with more slime, not that it mattered.

She was covered, her face, her hair, inside her clothing. When she spat to clear her throat a glob of white ooze splashed into the pool she was kneeling in.

When she tried to stand the ooze rose up around her, arms wrapping around her, half formed bodies dragging themselves up over her, clinging and pulling her back down, embracing her and smothering her.

"I'm the real Ada," Carla cooed and then threw her own words back at her, "You're nothing."

"You're Carla Radames," Ada spoke, her calm tone hiding her growing desperation, desperation that Carla seemed to sense, the forms holding her growing more solid, more recognizable, "A brilliant geneticist who had the misfortune of catching Simmons' eye and - "

Gelatinous fingers clawed at her mouth, silencing her by clinging and then melting into her flesh.

"Simmons got what he deserved," Carla growled, her words spoken by dozens of scowling faces, "He's a monster, a beast and he'll live on as one, a toy for me in my new world."

"Simmons is dead."

Carla laughed, the laughter coming from a particularly well formed body that pushed its way up from the slime beneath Ada, "A pity. He deserved to live and suffer, to see his precious order fall."

The body lifted its arms to grab her shoulders, to pull her down closer, its hands melting when they touched her, slime seeping through her clothing. Ada struggled, tried to pull back against the weight holding her down, threatening to crush her. Slime dripped down over her eyes, but she could still see, somehow.

More arms rose up around her, but this time they grabbed at Carla, pushing her away and then pulling her back down into the slime.

Ada rose to her feet, a dozen half formed doppelgangers rising up all around her and then sinking back into the slime.

All except for one.

Carla.

The boat heaved beneath her feet, the ooze having finally reached something important and doing enough damage to compromise the hull.

She had to hurry.

A wave of slime bore down on her, only to part harmlessly to either side.

Was Carla playing with her? Taunting before delivering the final blow, or was it that she knew the truth on some subconscious level, that it was all a lie.

Ada shook her head, slime dripping form her hair, down her shoulders, even as more crept up her legs to replenish what was lost.

With a scream of rage the doppelganger rushed her, splashing against her and knocking her back down, pushing her under the slime, against the deck of the boat. She pushed back and the two of them wrestled in the ooze, hands clawing at them both, waves of slime washing over them even as the boat sank, cold water rushing in.

"Give it up Carla. You know the truth."

That was why she'd failed, on some level she'd known that it was all lies built upon lies.

But lies were so much a part of who she was that the truth was…

Weight pressed down on her, crushing her.

"No!"

She clawed her way to the surface, but hands held her down. They were growing stronger, Carla was gaining more control.

"Simmons tried to remake you, but you knew the truth. You fought him."

Carla attempted to suffocate her, slime forcing its way into her mouth.

"I read all the files. I know all of it."

Ada shoved Carla away, forced her way to the surface, spat out an impossibly large amount of slime. Looked down at her hands, translucent and dripping.

She tried to stand.

Next to her the doppelganger rose back up as well. It had somehow managed to mimic not just her, but the clothing she had been wearing, a splash of color against flowing white ooze.

"Simmons was insane, he twisted you into what he wanted, a mirror of me, but you know the truth. Deep inside, you knew who you really were. That's why you turned against him."

The doppelganger shook its head.

Another formed next to it, grimacing as it pushed itself to its hands and knees, the dripping slime that formed its hair hiding its face as it spoke.

"Carla Radames is..."

"I am..."

More of them were forming, grabbing at her, at each other, fighting.

"Simmons..."

"He killed her."

"Killed Carla."

"You know the truth."

The boat groaned.

A wave broke over the deck knocking Ada to the deck, the water threatening to push her overboard. Once again hands grabbed her legs, her arms, her shoulders, pulling her back onto the boat, helping to her feet.

A doppelganger stared at her, looked her in the eye, "You know the truth."

"You do too."

And she did.

Scattered bits and pieces, fragments of memories. Her own, but also those of Carla Radames. Not just what she'd managed to piece together, the narrative she'd constructed for herself, but actual memories.

She looked down at herself, bare skin translucent white and dripping.

Conflicting memories.

The recollection of knowing that she wasn't actually the idealized version of who Simmons had wanted her to be.

It was all an act, one she'd grown fond of, but…

It was all there'd been for her to cling to, noting but a muddled, horrifying blankness before.

Memories that were her own and those of what Simmons had tried to make Carla into.

Why did she know what Carla knew, what she'd endured?

Simmons' affections, charming at first, swiftly indistinguishable from torment. He was a possessive man, stifling. It was the reason she'd abandoned him so easily, turned against him when she realized that it was simply about him having yet another plaything.

Simmons was a collector of dangerous things and she'd had no intention of being part of it.

Though she wasn't above proving just how dangerous she could be if he provoked her.

Heh ad, with his games, his manipulations.

She'd left him, turned against him when…

She looked at the doppelganger.

It stared back at her, its expression one of horror.

All around her the others echoed its reaction, gasping, staggering back, clutching their heads, tearing at their hair, screaming.

Another wave washed over the boat.

This time the slime itself held her fast, held all of them in place as the water rose around them, pulling the boat down to the bottom of the harbor.

She tried to reach the surface, but she couldn't. Doppelgangers grabbed at her, struggled to free themselves from the slime and the sinking boat and pulled her back. The process was repeated dozens of times next to her, doppelgangers fighting each other in a desperate attempt to escape from drowning, but they couldn't. They weren't going to escape from the slime because it was what made them, they were mere projections of it, pieces of a whole.

They didn't drown.

It couldn't drown, it was too far removed from human biology for that.

Slowly the boat settled in a cloud of silt, bubbles and debris floating up round them as the doppelgangers stopped fighting and settled down. It took a long time and each time she thought it was over some stray thought, some realization would sweep through and it would start up again. Each time she got dragged back into it as she, as they, tried to reassert them self, to sort Carla's memories from her own, to create a dominant consciousness for the form they shared.

It was horrible, horrifying.

She was able to recall, with perfect clarity, what Carla had done.

Bits and pieces of who she had been were there as well, painful fragments of a shattered self, fighting to keep from being subsumed.

Target Carla because she had the skills he needed to accomplish his goals and then turning on her when it proven the easiest path to success. Carla had never suspected a thing until it was too late and she'd emerged from the chrysalis a near blank slate.

Simmons had molded her, shaped her into what he wanted, but she'd always suspected something was wrong, not just repressed memories. He'd made her too well.

She'd suspected _something_ and what she'd found started a spiral into insanity.

How could it have turned out any other way? Carla fighting to emerge from the cipher Simmons had molded her into.

Fighting and losing. If she were to survive Ada knew she had to overcome those memories, break what was left.

Carla Radames was dead, a stranger she'd researched, but some of it was achingly familiar.

Bits and pieces existed that hadn't been in the documents she'd read, though she could tell herself she was simply extrapolating if it helped.

Fewer and fewer of the doppelgangers fought, realization and understanding slowly spreading through the mass that formed them, a mass that they melted back into.

A dozen left.

Thoughts unified until things finally started to make sense.

Half a dozen now.

Carla Radames was dead.

Four.

She'd been the one to finish her off because...

Two

She was the real Ada Wong and now Carla was too.

One.

The last recognizable human form melted back into slime and massive bulk of it shuddered on the seabed.

The ultimate murder/suicide.


	32. Damaged Goods

**Summary:** During her time as a captive of NeoUmbrella Sherry has a lot of time to think about her situation and everything in her life that brought her to that point. Knowing how far she's come, she refuses to give up hope.

 **Characters:** Sherry Brikin, mentions of Jake Muller and Derek Simmons

 **Notes:** An alternate view of Sherry and her adorably cheerful personality. Dips into some dark stuff because Sherry had it really rough.

o0o

Sherry sat in her cell, her room, struggling not to get up and start pacing. She was back home in her room. Same sterile white walls, same simple bed, except –

No, she couldn't do that to herself.

She was back home in her room.

Home and safe and

Trapped.

But that was a familiar enough place to be.

Any minute Derek would come by to talk to her or maybe let her out of her room.

Only for another set of tests though. That was all it ever was, tests and evaluations, even if they were disguised as something fun, and once a week a visit with Dr. Chowdhury.

Was it bad that the highlight of her week was a visit from her psychologist? That the one good thing that she could expect was Anita showing up just to talk?

Oh god she missed Anita so bad.

She knew that she didn't really need to see Dr. Chowdhury anymore, Derek had said as much, but it didn't hurt and…

Her thoughts were going in a bad direction again.

Redirecting them was easy, second nature to her. Derek was right, she didn't need a psychologist, she'd made so much progress, but she liked talking with Anita. Of all the people she knew Anita was the most like a friend, telling her stories, showing her pictures of her two boys. Sherry hadn't ever met Kavi and A.J. and never would, but she felt like she knew them from Anita's stories about them.

On the bright side once she got back home she was going to have plenty of stories to tell for a change.

It was just a matter of time.

Until then she just had to stay calm and wait.

That wasn't very different from normal. Ever since she was twelve that had been the way of things. Before that even, with how busy her parents had always been. They'd always had work, but they'd tried to work things out. Mommy and daddy –

She was doing it again, the little kid thing. She had to try not to do it because it was something she did when she was stressed and doing it made her more stressed and positive feedback loops and all that.

Her parents had always tried to keep opposite hours so one of them could be with her. Dad usually took the night shift, always managing to finagle things so that he was able to read her a bedtime story before he left, even if he had to read it to her way before her bedtime. Her mom tried a few times, but it wasn't the same, she couldn't do the voices right.

Sometimes they couldn't get their shifts to line up and she was left with a sitter, or, more and more frequently towards…

More and more frequently she was left alone, but they always came home.

Except for the last time.

They didn't come home then and she went out to look for them because she was almost a teenager and that meant she was practically an adult. So she'd gone out to look for them and…

She was doing it again.

The thing outside her door was just a J'avo. It wasn't going to come in, it wasn't going to…

She'd been lucky. Claire and Leon had saved her back then, Derek had taken her in and made sure that she had a place to live while the doctors made sure she was okay.

And she'd been okay, mostly.

Her first psychologist, she didn't even remember the man's name because of how new and scary everything had been then, had determined that she was coping very well and stopped seeing her pretty quickly.

It helped that Derek, for whatever reason he hated it when she called him mister, was there pretty much all the time back then. Being on a first name basis with an adult had been strange, but it made her feel important, like she had control over something was what she decided later when she knew more about stuff like that.

About control.

She'd gotten used to the tests, even the painful ones because the pain was never that bad, didn't last that long and after a while it was attention. She craved attention and got to be the center of it like she never was before.

Attention was better than neglect.

She wasn't sure where she'd heard that, but it fit her situation right now.

The tests were pretty much the same that she was used to so that helped, something familiar. Getting blood drawn was actually reassuring because it meant that there probably wouldn't be anything worse that day.

And as long as the testing kept up she was safe because she was useful. It was when the testing stopped that there would be reason to worry.

Things, people even could stop being useful, that was something she'd learned as a little kid back at Raccoon and afterwards.

She wasn't sure which of the two categories she fell into, but the end result was the same for both so that didn't make a difference.

But they'd done a bone marrow aspiration on her today day and a test like that was usually part of something fairly big.

The Umbrella doctors weren't as generous with the anesthetic as the ones back home, but the pain was already gone, the injury healed without a trace. It probably wasn't even out of malice, sedatives and anesthetic didn't work too well on her and the doses she tended to need for there to be any real effect frightened the doctors. The same conversation had happened every time a new doctor ended up working on her back home, they'd come in, get told to prepare a local anesthetic for her, ask why she needed _that_ particular one instead of whatever they'd been taught would work. Most of the time they grudgingly accepted the answer of 'that's what works'. Then they'd be told how much.

One of them, important enough that when he made suggestions they were listened to, suggested switching to a general. He'd quit after he'd administered the maximum dose he felt was safe, which was still higher than what he felt was necessary and she told him that the other doctors were right. Apparently by that point she should have been out cold.

The look on his face when she told him that she was fine and got off the table and walked around to prove it had been hilarious.

He'd been the first person that had ever been afraid of her and by then she was used to things well enough that it was funny rather than embarrassing. Him being afraid of her for just walking around was something else, especially…

She'd come a long way since…

There had been bad times, but she was well past them.

Except as she and Anita knew, it wasn't exactly that she was past them, it was that she'd learned to cope well enough that it didn't matter.

That was the only reason they'd agreed to let her be an agent with the D.S.O., to try and track down Jake, because Anita had realized how important this was to her, knew her well enough to write her a clean bill of mental health, even when she knew that she was just coping, not cured.

But she knew all the tricks, how to distract herself, keep her thoughts going in the right direction. Knew what was and wasn't acceptable and what things to ignore no matter how much she wanted to do them.

All the things she didn't know when she was younger and that no one realized were a problem until…

They'd expected bad behavior, that she'd act out after all she'd been through. Things had been slow enough starting that it wasn't until they got really bad that any of the doctors took a step back and said 'wait, this isn't normal'.

It wasn't until she, as Derek put it when recounting the story, 'propositioned' him that anyone decided that there might be more to her outbursts than her being a traumatized little girl who'd just entered her teens. The fact that she backed him into a corner and it took two lab techs and a security guard to pull her off him and she managed to break one of the tech's arms probably had something to do with it.

Her first meeting with Dr. Chowdhury had been three days after that. She'd been in her room, sulking and heavily sedated and the doctor had been on the other side of the door. They'd talked about something, she couldn't remember what because of how out of it she'd been from whatever the doctors were using to keep her calm, but they'd talked for a long time. And the next day they'd talked more and the day after that.

Dr. Chowdhury, because at that point she couldn't pronounce the doctor's first name and it would be another month before they settled on Anita being close enough, quickly decided that she was a very traumatized young lady with anger issues and a whole bunch of other problems because of what she'd been through. So they started things with a lot of talking and lessons about coping strategies, because as Dr. Chowdhury put it, she was exceedingly smart.

Back then she hadn't felt terribly smart, just stressed and angry and unable to focus on anything except the bad things. It helped a little bit, she started learning the signs that she was about to do something and try and catch herself before it got too bad. As progress was made they started trying to figure out what was the cause of it all, what exactly got her going.

She couldn't explain it though, sometimes she just got angry and acted on it, other times terrible thoughts came to her and she couldn't help herself. Afterwards she sort of understood that they were terrible, mostly from the way everyone reacted, but when it was happening it just happened, no matter how embarrassed she ended up feeling afterwards.

It wasn't until several months later, after some sort of brain scan for some totally unrelated test, that they got any indication of a possible source.

Stuff just wasn't wired right.

More tests were done with that in mind, to see how her brain responded to different things. Not very well, or at least not anywhere close to normal. Pretty much everything that would cause her any degree of excitement, of any sort, instead got her aggressive, not angry, aggressive and from there it was a coin toss as to whether or not that would lead to a heightened state of arousal. Lots of dry, clinical terms were tossed around that made it clear prefect regeneration wasn't the only side effect of the dormant G-virus.

Her sessions with Anita, they were on a first name basis by then, sort of changed direction. Knowing that her responses were irrational, not anything that lined up with the way a normal person would react, even a normal crazy person, the focus became training her to avoid acting on her aggressive impulses. It was hard, because the whole while she'd been getting worse.

The next year was rough, but she started making progress, progress being that her behavior didn't deteriorate any farther.

Anything positive, any sign of improvement was rewarded and after two years of hard work with Anita she was improved enough that for her Christmas gift she was allowed to go out and walk in the snow. Anita was there with her of course, Derek wasn't because he was busy with something, and there were a dozen guards watching her the whole while because it was safer that way.

It was a test as much as it was a reward. Would she be able to stop herself before she attacked the guards? Would she be able to keep herself from trying to…she honestly wasn't sure what she was trying to do during those incidents, because what she was trying didn't always line up with what she was physically able to do.

Much to her surprise being outside actually helped. There were more distractions, more things for her to think about other than the sort of stuff she and Anita had been trying to stop. She got to start spending a lot more time outside of her room after that, got a lot more little projects to distract her.

All the bad stuff never really went away, she just got better at ignoring it and not thinking the sorts of thoughts that would make it worse. Eventually she was able to pass for normal. The urges were still there, they were never going to go away, but she could ignore them.

And it all culminated with Derek deciding to let her work for the D.S.O. to find Jake Muller.

Jake had given her plenty of things not to think about because even if some of it might have been normal, he was attractive, not much younger than her and not as awful person as he made himself out to be, most of it wasn't. Thinking about what it would be like if he were to touch her or kiss her or stuff like that was one thing, but thinking like that quickly lead to her thinking about pinning him to the ground and…

It was a lot not to think about because in her mind there really wasn't too much distinction between violence and other things.

Sometimes she wanted to tear his throat out, sometimes she wanted to fuck his brains out. Most of the time it was both.

That was probably what it was like to be in love.

She hoped he was okay.

And that help would come soon.

Staring at the featureless walls she smiled and tried to pretend that she was at home.

Someone would have to come and rescue them sooner or later. Jake was too valuable for them to do otherwise. All she had to do was wait. She was good at waiting, she'd been doing it for most of her life after all.


End file.
